Dedicated Follower Of Fashion (Random Annoyances Re-Visited)

I'm a Mod, I'll always be a Mod,
My coat is a Crombie, My shirt's a Ben Sherman,
The shoes on my feet were made by a German...

That comes from something that used to get shown on MTV (back in the days when the majority of MTV's programming actually centred around music !). To be honest the guy delivering it was more of a well dressed skinhead than a Mod (Crombie's and DM's were always more skinhead fashion in my world) but that little rhyme stuck in my head for some reason.

I have recently finished reading a book about Scooter Boys, as is my want in finding out more about Mod related "stuff". I have a fascination with all things Mod, and Scooter Boys, or Scooterists as some prefer to be known, developed in the UK out of the Mods fascination with that particular mode of transport. Said book was written by a fella who claimed to be (well on the back of the copy I had anyway) a graduate in Social Sciences and a sometime lecturer on the subject of youth culture. You'd think with all that academia, knowledge and experience behind him the guy would be able to SPELL !

I read a lot and you expect to find the odd spelling/grammar mistake in a book. Even your average 500 page best seller will feature 1 or maybe two. But Scooter Boys had something like 6 or 8 and it's only 150 pages or so long...and 30-40 of those are just photographs ! I suppose some blame should lie with the proof readers but hey, we're all human and it's possible to miss things. I'm sure the proof readers weren't inserting spelling errors (unless they were closet greasers...hmmmmm...never considered that before) so that leaves the blame squarely with our graduate/lecturer. None of them really stick in my mind just that I kept tutting to myself while reading as I came across another one thinking "how do you graduate from University while not being able to spell ?".

It's just another example of the wider malaise bought about by "text speak". Hell's teeth I even put punctuation in my text messages ! Have you noticed how the word "of" is slowly replacing the word "have" ? As in "he should of been here by now" instead of "he should have been here by now". I was reading something my niece had submitted as homework recently and although the teacher had quite rightly highlighted a number of spelling mistakes in good old red pen, not once had the teacher highlighted the incorrect use of "of" instead of "have" (confusing isn't it). If the teachers in schools aren't correcting kids what chance have they got ?

Ahhhh...just call me a whinging old git...

(DISCLAIMER: Any spelling mistakes found in this post are obviously the wok of the small army of retired greasers who proof read these submissions !!!)