Of errant ‘E’s and that idiot Fowler

It wasn’t the best of times, but it just might have been one of the worst, because there I was sipping a beer and gawking, with goggle-eyed inebriation, at the bar staff, who had bleached their hair blonde for some sordid event.

Not only were their heads gleaming like little bobbing suns, but they wore black T-shirts — all of which had “I may be blonde but I’m smart...drink (name of brand withheld as the writer cannot afford to be sued) emblazoned on them.”

Now — apart from the fact that the tipple in question was so vile it would have been unceremoniously booted out of any self-respecting moonshine palace — I am a great supporter of the blonde cause. In fact, I am an ardent fan of Paris Hilton (the actress, not the socialite), Jessica Simpson (Daisy Duke, not Newlyweds) and Anna Nicole Smith (the live version preferably).

But I digress, my apologies.

Now the little ditty on the shirt was perfectly innocuous in itself, but when I spotted one of the male members of staff wearing the same shirt (imprint and all) I was aghast, verging on agog.

“Excuse me,” I said, “do you know what’s wrong with that shirt you’re wearing?”

Now it’s never a good idea to probe a hulking South African fly-half, but a man’s got to do, what a man’s got to do.

“Why? What’s wrong with it,” he muttered, twirling an empty Sol, with cringe-worthy agility.

“Oh nothing major, it just assumes you’re a woman.”

“A what...?”

Thankfully for me the music was loud enough, and the lights low enough to mask my sharp intake of breath, quivering bladder, and eyes that were now the size of pimped-up flying saucers.

“Blonde!” I shouted quickly, already wondering whether a broken nose or a broken jaw, would be a better story to tell the little ones (my sister’s, not mine).

“What’s wrong with blonde?”

“Blonde,” I muttered, “spelt the way it is on your shirt, implies a woman. A man would have been ‘b-l-o-n-d’.”

“Don’t be a smart arse,” he said.

“Don’t blame me, blame that pedant Henry Watson Fowler,” as soon as the words came out of mouth, I knew I had just stepped over a boundary: that which lies between erudite nag and pompous twit (I was twittering like a Tit).

As I beat a hasty retreat to the nearest exit I heard him call out over the din of the Jam: “Who did you say it was?”

I stopped. My left brain recreated the battle of the Somme with my right. I turned and walked back to the burly barkeep and stared into his nasal passages, for purely height reasons of course.

The words were forming, and my tongue was contorting trying to keep them in. It’s tough-muscle status now in serious jeopardy. And then I uttered: “It’s whom, not who...you moron.”

Next week: How to prevent organ failure by curling up into a foetal position, while being stomped on by a 150 kg supertanker of a man