June 21, 2024

#3: APOSTROPHE CATASTROPHE

This week: the largest cash heist in UK history, pointlessly patriotic offices and programmatically generated jigsaws of British politicians.

Ed Jefferson is attempting to visit every Mews in Greater London. This week: the largest cash heist in UK history, pointlessly patriotic offices and programmatically generated jigsaws of British politicians, but first…

The other week I was visiting Chichester, the town I grew up in, and walked down a street called St. John’s Street, except maybe it isn’t called St. John’s Street because on some of the signs it’s called St. Johns Street. The local council’s website isn’t much help - both versions are in use depending on what page you happen to be looking at. Maybe Chichester’s MP¹, Gillian Keegan could get involved and sort this out - her office is actually on this street - but she’s probably too busy doing important things like going on the radio to talk absolute shite about “gender ideology” in an attempt to appeal to a handful of lunatics, etc.

This road sign thing is not a unique problem - check out Tanner’s Close/Tanners Close (depending on which side of the street you’re on) in Southampton on Google Streetview. In fact keeping track of apostrophes is apparently so difficult that every so often you get a news story about councils doing away with them altogether - North Yorkshire had a very exciting few weeks last month when they banned, then almost immediately unbanned them after getting yelled at by furious punctuationheads.

What’s so difficult about apostrophes? North Yorkshire council claimed it was something to do with the BS7666, a UK government standard for place names, but tech site The Register looked into it and couldn’t find anything any such restriction. Other councils that have tried to get rid of apostrophes have claimed that punctuation makes it harder to dispatch the emergency services to the roads in question, but I talked to a couple of people who work in this area and they seemed, at best, doubtful that this would be an issue with the tech used in 999 call handling these days.

My guesses as to the what’s going on here:

1) There may well be an issue with some pieces of software that local councils interact with - for various reasons handling apostrophes (and other characters more exciting than a, q, 4 and so on) is slightly complicated, in that it’s very easy to write software that handles it badly - I could imagine across the umpteen bits of software, websites, apps and so on that different bits of a council use, you’re going to get some shit ones that melt down at the first sign of anything as exciting as punctuation.

2) Consistency. I actually had to spend quite a lot of time thinking about street names, because I’m writing a newsletter about a specific sort of street called a Mews. You should subscribe to it. It turns out there isn’t exactly a big list of every single Mews - instead I’ve compiled my own from a few different sources. But the thing is these sources don’t always match - one might tell me there’s a St James’ Mews, while another says St James Mews, St James’s Mews, St. James’ Mews or even Saint James Mews². CAN YOU EVEN IMAGINE? Ultimately the issue isn’t ‘computer’, it’s ‘person’ - I’m deducing the existence of a road through dozens of different bits of data that were manually entered by dozens or even hundreds of different people over a long period of time, providing a lot of opportunity for at least one of them to get something wrong. Having had to go through the process of reconciling all the different names for thousands of Mewses, I can see the appeal of trying to at least reduce the number of possible variations you can end up with.

Ultimately, I do lean towards the view of people who go round adding back the apostrophes with marker pens (though I’m not going to go as far as joining the Apostrophe Protection Society) - it does just feel a bit lame to change this stuff to make life easier for someone writing bad software, or someone doing bad admin, speaking as someone who has done plenty of both. But in the long list of things that local councils can barely afford to do these days, I would imagine ‘consistent street signs’ is quite far down in terms of priority³.

My suggestion: upset absolutely everyone and replace all punctuation on street signs with the cry laughing emoji (😂), making absolutely no-one happy.

MEWSES VISITED THIS WEEK

#21 Harriet Mews, Bexley, DA16

A small housing estate on former industrial land - in February 2006, around the time the Mews was built, the extant industrial estate next door had a brief moment of fame when £9,655,040 in cash was found in a shipping container. This was part of the proceeds of the UK’s largest cash heist a few days earlier, the robbery of over £52 million from a Bank of England cash depot in Tonbridge. The full story behind this is too long to go into here, but is fairly bizarre, involving, for example, a failed UFC fighter convincing a make-up artist to help disguise the robbers by saying they were going to be filmed for a martial arts video game⁴. Most of the key figures were caught, but the majority of the money is still missing. Have you seen 32 million pounds recently?

Anyway, these events possibly explain the planning application for a more secure automatic gate at the Mews’ entrance.

#22 Rose Mews, Bexley, DA16

Does a Mews count if they haven’t finished building it yet? I guess it does!

#23 Glebe Mews, Bexley, DA15

Glebe land is land that a church either owns, or benefits from, and the houses here were built on land behind a church, so go figure. Anyway, they may or may not be going to knock the church down due to lack of interest. Sorry Jesus.

#24 Sandwich Mews, Bexley, SE9

Most of these are infill housing developments - this used to be a load of manky garages - so I find it pathetically amusing that they called this bit of ‘filling’ Sandwich Mews. Do you see?

#25 Northcote Mews, Bexley, DA14

Where do marble fireplaces come from? Here, about 30 years ago before they knocked down the workshop and built 3 bungalows. Sorry to the people who were unloading their shopping while I was trying to take a photo, I’m not a pervert I swear.

#26 Chatswood Mews, Bexley, DA14

It’s a shame when you go digging for a bit of ‘interesting’ history and get exactly what you asked for, i.e. there used to be a children’s home called the Hoblands Hostel for Working Boys here and yeah it doesn’t get any less grim because there was an historic sex abuse case. Ho hum.

#27 Abbey Mews, Bexley, DA14

Once upon a time there was a big house and then the house got turned into business premises used by various generic sounding training companies and then they built this in the garden. The end. *squints at map* YOU GOT ENOUGH PLACES TO PARK, SIDCUP?

#28 Granville Mews, Bexley, DA14

I think this was a timber yard once, which I suppose is interesting if you like timber yards. Apparently James Corden once called Sidcup "the armpit of England", which I suppose by some sort of inverse transitive law means it must be alright really.

#29 Maltings Mews, Bexley, DA15

Not clear why they bothered to make this a mews as it was happy enough being 86A, B and C Station Road for a long time. The two buildings on it now are called Winston House and Churchill House. Grow up.

#30 Abbotsleigh Mews, Bexley, DA15

A care home, so I was a bit borderline on whether it should be included, but eh, gets on vibes. Before there was a care home here there was a Drill Hall here, where soldiers would line up to be inspected by e.g. Leslie Hore-Belisha, the Minister of Transport for whom the orange Belisha beacons still found at some pedestrian crossings are named. We know this because, for some reason, you can buy a jigsaw puzzle commemorating the event⁵. Why not buy one and anonymously donate it to the Care Home?

Total mewses visited: 30/2380

The Mews Letter is written, researched, produced and directed by Ed Jefferson so everything in it is his fault - apart from the facts about the real world, which he can claim barely any responsibility for. See more stuff at edjefferson.com.