Life outside the engine room

After more than 20 years in the engine room my escape plans are coming to fruition so within a few weeks JD will be labouring on with a new fellow stoker – though I hope to continue submitting noteworthy points from my seaside hideaway.

One of the more precious artefacts I'll be leaving in JD's care is a thick file entitled the black museum, packed with some of the more noteworthy howlers produced by our charges over the past couple of decades. No doubt JD will trawl through them for your delectation, but while the file's on my desk, here are a few examples, picked at random:

• "it will in each case be a question of fact as in each case no two cases will be the same"

• "a street lighting upright" (lamp post?)

• "fire or heat turns this chemical into a lethal gas which causes severe irritation to skin and eyes" (leaving an uncomfortable corpse?)

• "dangerously unsafe vehicles"

• "underground motorway toll tunnels"

• "sloping rear ramps"

• "new and previously unseen problems"

• "facilitates easy mounting"

• "rear entry doors at the back of the vehicle"

• "an unfair bias"

• "a database of information"

• "over the years he's built up his business rapidly"

• "dimensionally precluded" (won't fit?)

• "the judge commented that that was not the only problem that that company had had"

• "a secret police undercover operation"