Delayed bus causes happy accident
On my way to a meeting at the Autograph gallery in Shoreditch, the bus inevitably ran into congestion at the massive roadworks in progress at Old Street roundabout.
This project is a daily pain in the arse for many on the 243 to Wood Green or the 55 to Walthamstow.
The day it’s finished will be a day of great relief.
Today, though, I was glad that this unholy cluster of steel and rubber saw my bus stuck at the same traffic lights TWICE.
A weaving fire engine in front of our 243 seemed to have forgotten where the fire was, or even if there was a fire at all.
Maybe the emergency team was instead on its way to free a cat stuck in a tree, or a boy with his head stuck in some railings.
Whatever, the engine’s blacktop body language was confusing.
The woman sat next to me on the 243 was busily tackling a sudoku puzzle in that day’s Metro newspaper.
I noticed that of the three degrees of difficulty, she had chosen the one headed “Easy”.
My non-interest in this woman’s puzzling prowess was useful because otherwise I might not have looked up and spotted this smartypants ad from the Economist news magazine.
Clever-clogs ads are a rarity these days, and ones that deploy anagrams even rarer.
I did a web search for previous examples of ads that have used anagrams as a hook, but drew a blank.
The Economist today had stated that the UK government’s newly announced 5G deal with Huawei is a risk worth trying to “manage”, despite the aggro it might shove in the face of Donald Trump.
Impressive as this Economist ad is, I’m not sure it’s grammatically correct.
Try “Economist readers have worked it out already” instead.
Or should that be “try instead”…?
