THE mystery of the phantom apostrophe of Golcar has been solved.
As reported in Friday’s Examiner, a picture celebrating the renovation of the area resulted in some curious correspondence about the war memorial in the centre of the village.
It appeared that between the S and T of “lest” an apostrophe had been inserted, but many thought it looked more like a natural fault in the stone next to an unfortunately long space between the two letters.
Now however Golcar’s Alan Livesey has stepped forward to assure us that it was indeed a stray apostrophe – and he was the man who accidentally inserted it into his instructions for the stonemason.
Before any rush to criticise him however, it should be noted that as a key member of a local fundraising group who proposed the idea without his efforts there would be no memorial in the first place.
Alan said: “I was secretary of the Golcar Winkle Club and the memorial was built in 1990 for £1,000.
“We were rushing to get it completed for the Remembrance Day Parade and when I wrote it out it was entirely my mistake.
“I got a lot of stick over it, but efforts were made to cover up the error.”
Former chairman of the club Peter Wrigley said: “English wasn’t his best subject.
“When we realised there wasn’t a lot we could do about it.
“We thought about getting it skimmed but it’s just one of those things.
“We raised the money among the local community with a donkey derby, pub crawls and numerous things. We did well as £1,000 20 years ago was a lot more money.
“We’ve had a laugh about it since, at least we can say our memorial is absolutely novel thanks to Mr Livesey.”
Twenty years on and one question remains however.
Why would a stonemason who presumably had some experience of words like “lest” faithfully transcribe such a blatant error?
Alan added: “It did occur to me – why he didn’t query it?
“For me it would have been the kind of mistake that could have been picked up on, but it was 20 years ago.”
