A wet Bank Holiday - a great excuse to curl up with some of the books that have sat on my 'light reading' heap, having been picked up in supermarkets and on charity book tables in recent weeks.  I enjoyed having the time to read these books - three over the course of the weekend - though none of them would really pass as literature: two were pretty much pulp fiction and the other - well I'm not sure really, ostensibly autobiography/social history it also had hints of theology, or at least spirituality.  The last one woke up the research corner of my brain making we wonder yet again just what constitutes history and how it may or may not be useful.

There was one thing that really annoyed me with the last of the books, and is increasingly annoying me, which was the use of American English not only in the idiom (which just sounds daft when put into a middle England context with middle English characters) but the spellings - which are creeping more and more into the writing of people who, in my view, should know better.  Accounts of people 'waiting in line' for a bus in London (whatever happened to queueing?) or having 'gotten wet' irritate but don't infuriate.  It is 'smelt' for 'smelled' and 'spelt' for 'spelled' that really offend my sensibilities.  Smelt, as any purist knows is either (a) a small fish or (b) a product of melting metal ore - in the UK it has nothing to do with aromas or odours (however pongy the fish!).  Likewise 'spelt' is a cereal crop - having as much to do with the arrangement of letters in words as a alphabetti spaghetti.  So, my inner Lynn Truss has been awakened once more.

Rant over!