The British are an amusing lot, if perhaps not always because they intend to be.  Having spent the past two nights at a “hotel” which bore a striking (and unintentional!) resemblance to Fawlty Towers—complete with byzantine staircase and hallway route to my room—I’ve grown quite fond of the literate nature of their signs.  All manner of signs, from those instructing one not to litter to those explaining that an area is closed for construction are written as if they were epigraphs, crafted to survive millennia as tributes to a culture’s highest and most earnest use of their language.  Here are a few of my favorites:

And then there are a few I don’t quite get:

…a few that that are simply too good to be true…

(My heart goes out to this poor scaffolding.  I recommend Valium or perhaps something in a nice benzodiazipene, under the circumstances.)

…and now for some parting thoughts and a dose of British advise: