Donate SIGN UP
Gravatar

Answers

1 to 18 of 18rss feed

Best Answer

No best answer has yet been selected by mikey4444. Once a best answer has been selected, it will be shown here.

For more on marking an answer as the "Best Answer", please visit our FAQ.
I had a similar experience when I went to Granada.

I expected to see the magnificent moorish palace and gardens. So I was rather let down by the Coronation Street set.
Question Author
Same sort of thing Grom...both full of old queens !
Some years back a colleague went to see our local team play an away match in Hull. Upon arrival, he began following the crowd and walked in their general direction. He marvelled at the size of the ever-growing throng as he neared the ground and reasoned that for a home game they had a good number of supporters entering through the turnstiles.
It took him a few minutes to realise he'd joined up with rugby league fans who were on their way to watch Hull Kingston Rovers!
Question Author
20 years ago I went to the funeral of a great uncle in Torquay, that I hadn't seen since I was 10 years old. The funeral went on a bit but when I got outside I realised that it was the wrong funeral ! My funeral was carefully lining up at the entrance, waiting on us to move out the exit door ( you know what crematoriums are like...bloody production line on a Saturday morning )

So I dutifully sat through another boring 20 mins !
In 1972 we had a History teacher who, as he was relatively young with longish hair, we assumed was quite 'with it'.

Until the day he was teaching about the Churchills/Dukes of Marlborough and their ancestral home Blenheim Palace at Woodstock which was also notable because of 'the big music event held there a few years back'.

Instant credibility collapse!
told the wife we were going to the taj mahal for our honeymoon, she wasn't expecting a curry
When I was in the Royal Military Police, a recurring joke was when personnel were due to be posted elsewhere to another RMP unit.
All too often a Corporal would be told he was being posted to the Far East, which inevitably meant Hong Kong.
After initial jubilation, said Corporal would then be further enlightened that the posting was to the far east of England, which inevitably was a posting to Colchester!
Question Author
Zuel....in the early 90's I was in Woodstock, Vermont, an extraordinarily pretty little town in New England. I only meant to stay one night but it was so nice, I ended up staying two. I was spending my holiday roughly following Bill Bryson's Book The lost Continent But I got into a quite heated argument, in a bar with two middle-aged tourists from the deep South who insisted that the famous Woodstock Festival was held there in 1969. I patiently explained that it was actually held in upper New York State, miles and miles away. But they wouldn't have it ! Its wasn't even held in Woodstock NY, but 46 miles away at a place called Bethel.

You can always tell a American but you can never tell them very much, especially on their own soil ! Later in the holiday, I was standing looking at the famous Mount Washington Hotel, in Northern New Hampshire, a State I know quite well, and another thick Yank insisted that The Shining was filmed there, Again, I explained, not terribly patiently this time, that the exterior shots for Kubrick's film were shot at the The Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood in Oregon, 1000's of miles away, but again, to no avail !

Have a look...do they look at all alike ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Washington_Hotel#mediaviewer/File:Mt._Washington_Hotel.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shining_(film)#mediaviewer/File:Overlook_timberline.jpg
I know I always mention this, but at the 1996 Olympic Ceremony in Atlanta, Georgia, many of the crowd rose to cheer the Georgian Olympic team as it entered the stadium. An event made even funnier by David Coleman's commentary, where he drew attention to what otherwise might not have been picked up on the TV by wondering genuinely why the Georgians were getting such a welcome
I love this story, took me a while to find it...

// A JAPANESE tourist who wanted to catch a flight to Turkey was put
on a train to Torquay after asking for directions at Paddington.
Kumiko Tsuchida, who was on her first visit to Britain, arrived in Devon
at midnight, convinced that she had been through the Channel Tunnel
and was in Istanbul.

She was found wandering at 2am by police who instigated an operation
involving social services, a home for the elderly, a travel agent and the
Japanese embassy.

Things started to go wrong on Monday when she left the house of a
friend in London to catch a train to Heathrow. At Paddington she
inquired about the best way to travel.

Speaking through an interpreter, Mrs Tsuchida said: "I told the staff at
Paddington that I wanted to go to Turkey. I kept saying 'Turkey,
Turkey'. But because of my pronounciation they put me on a train to
Torquay. I thought it was a long way to the airport but when I asked
people 'Turkey? Turkey?' they told me I was on the right train."

"She told officers that she had been on the train so long, she genuinely
believed she was in Turkey already," said a spokesman for Devon and
Cornwall police. //
// a "terrible, terrible mistake". //

It's not that bad. A 'terrible terrible mistake' is when you leave the gas on and your house blows up. I'd classify this as an embarrassing gaffe.

ludwig - "// a "terrible, terrible mistake". //

It's not that bad. A 'terrible terrible mistake' is when you leave the gas on and your house blows up. I'd classify this as an embarrassing gaffe."

I'd agree - but the MP has inadvertently upset a lot of people, and needs to convey her embarassment.

I feel sorry for her - it is an easy mistake to make, and she has probably been given briefing notes by a researcher and gone from those, not having had time to check out the accuracy of what she was given.
I recall 80's pop stars The Thompson Twins being four hours late for a gig in my home town. They were due to play at Tiffany's in Newcastle-under-Lyme, which is near Stoke, but their tour manager made the common mistake of hearing 'Newcastle' and thinking they were due at Tiffany's in Newcastle-on-Tyne, which is some three hundred miles further north!
///You can always tell a American but you can never tell them very much, ///

How true, some years ago I came across an American Website about Shakespeare which claimed he was born just outside London in the suburb of Stratford. My e-mailed correction pointing out that they had the wrong Stratford and that the right one at 200 miles away was hardly a suburb, even in USA terms, went unacknowledged.
Ooops - should read about 100 miles away.
Question Author
Canary...maybe that apocryphal story about the American couple, admiring Windsor Castle but sad that it was built so close to London Airport, may actually be true !

1 to 18 of 18rss feed

Do you know the answer?

We Have All Done It !

Answer Question >>