Daily Archives: Saturday, October 11, 2014

  • Stapleton Road Community Market

    A community market event took place earlier today on the section of Stapleton Road between Easton Way and Lower Ashley Road.

    image of march starting Stapleton Road Community market
    Image courtesy of Bristol News

    Although interspersed with showers, the event was well attended and had such attractions as food, music, bouncy castles, face painting and – at one point – a samba band adding yet more sound and vibrancy to our main local street in this part of town.

    The event was organised by the local community for the local community and has evidently gone down well with the people at Bristol News, who commented:

    The amazing people on Stapleton Road are having fantastic fun today and doing it for far less money than Make Sunday Special has ever done. And more importantly the community is doing it for itself. This is the “real spirit of Bristol” not the water slides, skiing clowns and ambling bands.

    It also shows a different side of a place that’s frequently just regarded, particularly by the rest of Bristol, as a source of inner city problems.

  • School English: see me after class

    I do worry when schools display lack of proficiency in the English language. After all, they are establishments whose tasks include imparting formal training in the vernacular.

    In particular, they seem to have problems with the use of the apostrophe (posts passim), whether that entails its use as a possessive or as an indication of omission.

    The latest example from the nursery slopes of Mount Academia was found almost on my doorstep at St. Nicholas of Tolentine RC Primary School in Pennywell Road, Bristol, which seems to think that childrens is the plural of child.

    showing misused apostrophe on school notice

    Should anyone from the school happen to be reading this, the correct punctuation is children’s. In the words of several of my old teachers: you could do better; see me after class. 🙂