Battles of the Sexes, Wars of the Words

by Reg Green (April 2025)

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Misprints. Some are irritating, some baffling, some (true or legendary) lighten the day, like the music review in the Guardian that referred to the Russian Tsar as ‘Doris Godunov,’ (which happened) or ‘The Queen pissed over the bridge,’ (which almost certainly didn’t.)
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Some mistakes turn out to be too good to be true, like the sign a friend told me he saw in the window of a beauty parlor that announced, “Ears pierced while you wait.” Or the British issue of Farmer’s Almanac, that claims the power to foretell even detailed events for the year ahead, that apologised to readers for raising its price “due to unforeseen increases in printing costs.”
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One I have savored over the years was a notice I saw from a body-building gym announcing a class in marital arts. I showed it to my wife who said, “Go, it’ll do you good.” I couldn’t quarrel with that. But I did point out that the same gym also had an advanced class which might be even better. “It’s called extra-marital arts,” I said.
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