Silly count.

I have been annoying people with my pickiness. Or is that pickyness? Neither, at least according to Blogger's spell-check. Do I care? Well, yes. What is the point in having a language if one does not appreciate its general rules? But I will accept that misunderstandings occur when basic common sense deserts in favour of slavish interpretation of what the eye sees.

Yesterday, in ASDA, we purchased the above box of fungi. It clearly states a price of £1 as it was a special offer. There was no bar code, just a product number. If you are familiar with the self-service tills at supermarkets, you will understand this. The highly trained operatives in ASDA, one would think, would be similarly familiar. Ours, on inputting the number into the machinery, received a prompt: "Enter amount" the screen said, which she repeated audibly. She stopped, thought for a second and, notwithstanding the fact that she was about to charge us £1 for every item, proceeded to count every mushroom in the box. Oh.