Well, I think a lot of FoLCs read the story as soon as it was available (I know I did, and by the looks of the comments folder, I'm not nearly the only one...), so hopefully it won't be *that* much of a spoiler. Still, I applaud your attitude, Rat.
In any case, I've never seen the L, and did find it somewhat odd. I just shrugged it off and blamed it on auto-pilot.
I have seen the heart in the middle, as Wendy posted, but that's rare.
What I see most often (on sidewalks, on TV, on tree trunks, etc) is a heart with
XX
+
YY
Sometimes with a little phrase under it, but more often not. Even when there is a phrase, it's not always directly related. Sometimes, it's just the couple's personal catchphrase (a few words of special significance to them).
I guess, as far as math is concerned, XX + YY = heart. <shrug>
Mostly, though, I think the + is there to indicate that XX goes with YY.
Anyway, while I'm posting, I'll take the opportunity to tell a vaguely related story...
When I was 12, my family went on a trip to England. We toured around the southern part of the island, starting and ending in London.
In London, we quickly discovered that there is a real reason why everyone walks around with a "brolly" (aka "umbrella"). Rain just seems to randomly come and go as it pleases. Never seen anything like it, even in New England ("Don't like the weather? Wait 15 minutes.") and Seattle ("Take a look at the mountain over there. If you can see the top, it's about to rain. If you can't, it's raining.").
To make touring around easier, we decided to get a weekly Tube Pass (in London, it's the Tube or the Underground. In NYC, it's the Subway. In Paris, it's the Metro. In Boston, it's the T... Every city I know has a different name for the same thing). I got a discount on mine because I was a kid. So, they stamped my photo ID "CHILD RATE" in red letters. Unfortunately, the background of the ID was also red, and the last letter didn't fit on the picture. So, I got a picture with "CHILD RAT" stamped on it in bold red letters.
As we were going around, we noticed a lot of language differences, and, at one point, started making a "US/UK Dictionary." It started off with obvious things like "Lorry" and "To Let," but quickly picked up other little oddities that came our way. I wish we still had it, because it'd be perfect for this thread.
Anyway, we had a lot of fun and saw a lot of cool things, but where's the amusement value in reading about that? So, I'm going to skim through things.
A day or so before we were ready to leave London, we rented a car. Dad drove us through Roundabouts (which, all too often, were part of the most direct path) and Circuses (which, sadly, had no elephants. No comment on the clowns.
) and was frequently heard muttering to himself "stayleftstayleftstayleft..." particularly when making turns. It was both amusing and disconcerting.
Leaving London, we headed out into the countryside, where we quickly found that unlike US roads (which are generally left open so that drivers can see all the mountains, valleys, forests, billboards, gas station signs, McDonald's signs, and other roadside splendors which will hopefully be interesting enough to help stave off highway hypnosis), there was very little to see off English roads. This was not because the countryside was any less scenic. Not at all. The problem was that for miles and miles the road was lined with nature's sheep fences (aka "hedges"), so that when we looked out our windows, all we could see was a continuous line of bush with an occasionaly tantalizing glimpse of rolling hills and beautiful pastures. We jotted something about this down in our "dictionary."
From time to time, we noticed things off the side of the road. Once, there was a steep hill, and, next to it, a little sign saying "Runaway Truck Ramp." I'd never heard of such a thing at the time, but Mom explained that sometimes trucks had brake problems when going down hills and that ramps were put in place to help slow them in case of emergency. In the US, however, this is depicted graphically (a yellow sign with a truck going up a hill). While we weres still considering possible implications of the words, we saw the ramp itself. It was a nice ramp, but it ended in what can only be called a small cliff, with no real barricade. I guess, if you were in a runaway truck, you just had to hope.
Later on, we passed a small turnoff. It was a little dirt road leading into what seemed like nothing in particular. Some scrub brush and such (not hedges). Wilderness, more or less. The sign next to the turnoff said "Tourist Bypass." That one cracked us up. I assume it was an analog to the US "Scenic Overlook," but it sounded to us like it was either a way to get around all those pesky tourists or a way to get all those pesky tourists to go off on a wild goose chase into the wilderness.
We had just written that one down and were still chuckling about it when we came to a place where the road had to go over a large hill (or small mountain, depending on your perspective). It wound back and forth, climbing gradually up the side of the hill. As we went higher, the switchbacks became sharper and sharper. Finally, the last one was a real hairpin. There were no lights except the car's headlights, and the only thing telling us that the road was no longer in front of us was a little sign on the edge of the cliff. "Route 3" (I think it was 3, but I'm not certain) with an arrow pointing straight down. We thought about this. As a matter of fact, we knew that Route 3 was straight down at the bottom of the cliff. That's where we'd been 10 minutes previously. Fortunately, Dad realized that the arrow was meant to be an indication of a hairpin turn, and managed to ease the car around it.
At the top of the hill, the road continued, but I noticed a tiny little sign off to the side. "Cat's Eyes Removed." That one had us for a while, as we considered exactly what kind of veterinarian's office we were passing. We didn't get the real answer until we made it to the B&B a few miles down the road. The owner laughed with us, and then explained that that's the UK name for those little road reflectors you see between lanes. (When we got home, I looked it up in the dictionary and found that there was, in fact, an entry explaining exactly this. It's just not a common term at all in the US. Usually, we don't think about them at all, and, when we do, we just call them "road reflectors.")
In the morning, we saw the breakfast menu. After we explained to the waiter that we were strange visitors from another continent who preferred to eat only the whites of the eggs ("co-less-ter-all?
"), we had a family discussion about what, exactly, a kipper was. Was it a fish? Was it a way of preparing fish? Was it both? What, exactly, was involved? Was it anything like Kippered Salmon (which we had heard of, but which didn't seem to exist on that side of the Atlantic (aka "The Pond").)? Dad seemed to know, but none of us was certain. Dad was also the only one to even consider having fish for breakfast.
From there, we continued touring, and had a thoroughly enjoyable trip (and continued discussions on the nature of kippers). We even got to take a hovercraft across the channel and back. We got cheap tickets because we chose not to actually step off the craft on French soil. It was a special class of ticket designed for people who wanted to do their shopping in tax-free international waters, but it worked well for us hovercraft-deprived tourists, too. My childish enthusiasm even got us a trip up to see the cockpit and the engines, with a guided tour from the captain himself (who had nothing better to do while waiting for passengers to get on and off).
So, I just thought I'd share. Parts of the story are relevant, right?
Paul, who forgot to mention earlier that recycled commas also make handy apostrophes. If you can get them to stay up there.
P.S. "Is it more acceptable in the UK to start a sentence with a conjunction than it is in the US? Discuss."
