Dot Wordsworth

Mind Your Language | 1 May 2004

A Lexicographer writes

issue 01 May 2004

Well, the Poles are in the European Union, and very welcome they are too as far as I’m concerned. Already Tesco and Carrefour are flogging the poor things centrally distributed comestibles with sell-by dates on them.

From my archives (a bundle of post extracted from a pile of unread medical magazines to which my husband subscribes as part of his ‘ongoing education’), I retrieve an interesting letter from Mr Peter Kassler of Haslemere. ‘We noticed recently,’ he writes, ‘in a Carrefour supermarket in southern France that a lack of mineral water on the shelves was explained by a printed card as a result of “mouvements sociaux à notre plateforme de distribution”.’

On the Kasslers’ return to England they found a similar card on an otherwise bare shelf of their local Tesco. ‘It informed customers that the absence of fresh food was due to “issues at our distribution centre”.’

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