Something’s been bothering me on my commute to Cardiff. I usually take the train, but when I have to drive, just after I’ve passed Cardiff City stadium, I always get a red light just before a railway bridge. It’s not the red light I object to, it’s the giant electronic billboard right there, its brightness of such ferocity that I feel it burning my retina. And, as is the way with these things, the moment you see anything up there you’re interested in, it changes again.
So it was that I kept half-seeing something so astonishing – and not in a good way – that I thought I must be mistaken. And then either the billboard or the traffic lights would change, and I’d be on my way. As time went on, I even started slowing down as I approached this junction to try to catch the offending ad. But even when I got a good look at it, I thought I must be mistaken. Eventually, at 6am one Saturday morning over Christmas, I parked, readied the camera on my phone, and waited. The roads were deathly quiet, neither car nor soul anywhere. Just me, my phone, and this wretched sign. All in the cause of seeking confirmation that I had indeed found the most egregious use of an apostrophe in history.
And there it was. I checked the photo and saw my eyes had not been deceiving me. I wish they had been. An advert for, and I quote, WALE’S LARGEST VAPE SHOP. I’m no pedant, and I appreciate it’s tricky to know where to put a possessive apostrophe when the word ends in S, but –ye gods! – this is quite something. And it was only when I’d captured it for posterity that I realised (so entranced had I been at the WALE’S) I’d missed CHEAPEST PRICE’S.
It’s weird, because I can’t see any such aberrations on the company’s rather well put-together website. It might even all be a ruse to grab attention. If so, it’s worked a treat with me. If only I was a vaper, I’d give them some custom and perhaps summon the courage to have a quiet word.
• Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster, writer and Guardian columnist
