A collared dove crashes into your window.  Shortly afterwards, a sparrowhawk devours a collared dove (or maybe woodpigeon) outside your window. Sometimes you just have to say what you see.    Another dove Yesterday I saw your ghost – A shocked angel printed on apparent air – So c

Me and abstract art have never really got along. Sure, I like some colours, and some arrangements of lines and shapes. It’s easy to like a Rothko, say. But I know that’s not really it. When faced with an abstract that’s not particularly eye-pleasing, I’m not su

Well, I say posh, but that’s only because I’m from the north west of England, where the ‘a’ sound in words like grass and bath is flat. That’s how English was originally pronounced, by all accounts – but in the 17th century, speakers in the south ea

Move over Innocent, there’s a new tone of voice in town. It’s grass roots, it’s truthy, it’s pipe-and-slippersy. Developed by Tandridge District Council, this is the voice of a slightly defensive person in late middle age who’s all right really. And isn&#

Millions of us have seen this so-wrong-it’s-right sign in a popular coffee shop chain. And I feel some kind of award is in order for syntax alone. A modifier so misplaced and dangling, it’s like a paragliding iguana caught in pylon wires. A full stop positioned with the el

Few things tickle Horsefeathers more than a misspelt or ungrammatical sign. So I thought it was time I recorded the greats in some kind of formalised way. Number one in the Sign of the Times series is this alarming promise made by a new aesthetician on my local high street: Believe it

Now that working from coffee shops is officially a thing, with its own half-hour documentary on Radio 4, and a meeja voice in the shape of Chris Ward and his interesting website WorkWhereYouLike – I find myself at last in the zeitgeist. Yes! Quite an achievement for an emptynest

This week’s despatch from World of Copy is prompted by the following headline from a property ad: Sunninghill, the address says it all. ‘So does the punctuation,’ added the haughty pedant, gleefully anticipating a new blog post. Because while I enjoy picking holes in

Whenever I optimise my website, it exists. It sails the ether like a candy-striped hot-air balloon, attracting cries of admiration and wonder. When I don’t optimise, it flops in a shrivelled heap on my keyboard. How did it come to this? Whose idea was it to create so much work?