Creeping Americanisation: A Sign of The Times

On the approach to the southern end of the town centre bridge in Worcester, England, there is a sign telling you which lane to get into for various destinations. Nothing unusual here, you might think, but on this sign the word ‘centre’ (as in ‘town centre’) was spelled the American way: center.

The offending road sign (photo copyright Bruce Officer)

How shocking! American spellings creeping onto British road signs? What would be next? Was this misspelling in fact a deliberate ploy, to allow invading American armoured divisions to find their way into the very heart of England’s fairest Faithful City on their way to annex Britain and make it the fifty-first state?

Something had to be done.

So I emailed that bastion of the British way of life – the Worcestershire County Council Roads Department. Back came a very nice response saying that they would correct the error the next time the sign had to be amended for any other reason.

Did they not understand the urgency? That the very sovereignty of our green and pleasant land was at stake? I held on in trepidation for almost a year, every day expecting the hoards of vowel-mangling colonials to descend. But at last I was able to breathe a sigh of relief. The sign had been correcting by the simple means of sticking a patch over the offending word.

The corrected sign (photo copyright Bruce Officer)

We were saved! The steel tip of American imperialism, bamboozled by our proper way of spelling things, would be unable to find the town centre and would instead end up lost in a haystack somewhere north of Wyre Piddle.

I could sit back, secure in the knowledge that Britain was once again safe, and that I, Bruce Officer, had been the one to step up and do my duty in the moment of crisis.