East London justification of the greengrocer’s apostrophe

Walking home through Hackney this evening, I met a charity shop with a sign that read, “Donation’s welcome.” “Are you sure about that?” I asked the proprietor. “Donation is welcome,” he explained. So “Apple’s £2 / kilo” means “Apple is two pounds a kilo,” there’s obviously a dialect singular / plural thing going on, and…

Queers and gypsies

April 1939, and the Valencian communist and later Mexican entrepreneur Arturo García Igual (Entre aquella España nuestra … y la peregrina, available in part on GBS) has, as a Stalinist commissar, been sent to the elite camp at Agde, France, where night after night unsuspected talents [took to] an improvised stage: actors, comics, illusionists and…