ah, bless

Near Victoria Tube station, giving directions to somebody who wanted either Charing Cross, or the Mall (I forget which) I told her to go along Buckingham Palace Rd until she came to Buckingham Palace, and then to go up the Mall: straight in front of Buckingham Palace. She looked confused, so I tried explaining again (presuming that I wasn't clear). She still looked confused.

Lady (pointing to nearby block of flats) "But this is Buckingham Palace, isn't it ?"

Friend is Big HR Cheese for a company you'd have heard of. But she has no idea of the shape of the country or where she is in it. Eg:

- We were driving past Worsley Church in Manchester, 10 miles from where she lives. She said "Is that Lincoln Cathedral?" on the basis that it looked a bit like a picture her mum had of it.

- She repeatedly confuses Chelmsford, Chesterfield and Cheltenham.

?

i was showing off telling MrF all the things I had learned for my anatomy and physiology module recently, and pointed out his carotid artery. except i pronounced it 'carrot-oid' artery. he was almost rolling on the floor laughing at me and i haven't lived it down since. a cross between an artery and a carrot ?

A young female colleague of mine, having purchased half a rotisserie chicken for her lunch, unpacked it and pointed at the hole left by the skewer, and said 'Oh no, look, that must be where they shot it!'

Actually - one of my favourites was from somebody I used to work with. I was talking about Ladies of Letters (the Womans' Hour/Radio 4 drama, broadcast daily over a week). Colleague didn't know what it was, and said (I quote): "I was like, Ladies of Letters - is that like Scissor Sisters part two ?"

These are great!

An ex-colleague thought it would be a good idea to auction off a print of the Titanic (it was a charidee do - lots of invited business peeps). Anyway, we pointed out that not many businesses would like to have a picture of a sinking ship in their foyer.

You had to be there....

Last time I was drunk I (for unknown reasons) was talking about neopolitan icecream and how I thought it was named after that famous man...Mr Neopolitan. No one knew who I was talking about and after a while people cottoned on that i meant Napolian. Im not sure why I thought he had an ice cream named after him or why I didnt actually know his name. I still get laughed at. In my defence.....im a bit thick.

A girl at work believing us when we told her that the White House was going to be renamed the Black house because it now had the first black president.

She rang her mum to tell her...bless!

These are both people I work with.

Talking to N about a watch my Mum had bought me for Christmas, Me: 'Oh this watch is annoying me, it's still an hour ahead and I haven't changed it yet.' N: 'I was going to say something really stupid then', I asked her what, her reply: 'I was going to ask if they're an hour in front in Burnley' ? It was still an hour in front from being in the warehouse.

Some regulars went away to Spain for Christmas and S asked if Christmas Day was on the same day there!

There are loads more, I'll keep thinking

When working at an airline one of my first jobs involved calling people when there was a schedule change to their flight, more than one passenger at different times came up with similar variations of the below . .

"Oh dear, and hour earlier?, my friends are travelling on the same flight but they are travelling in Economy, will they be leaving an hour earlier too?"

"Can I have a window seat please? I need to have fresh air when I am flying"

One of my many moments whilst working was calling travel agent in Sweden, although they spoke some English, it wasn't enough for them to understand what I was saying,

so I asked 'Do you speak French?'

"Oui" they answered sounding relieved and then they carried on with a stream of french

"No No No, I said, I don't speak french, I just wondered if you could"

I have no idea why I needed to know if they spoke french.

My assistant at work is bright in lots of ways, not great in others.She once argued with me about whether the Loch Ness Monster lived in Loch Lomond! She was adamant, even when I pointed out there was a clue in the name!

Also, when I offered her a flatscreen monitor to go with her computer, instead of her existing monitor, she said "I wouldn't want to lose my desktop icons".

When we were getting married, I tried to explain the concept of wedding lists to my (techy) husband - so I said "You pick a company you like the products from, and then everyone buys you what you want. Which company do you like?" hoping he'd say John Lewis, etc. He said "IBM."

My 20 year old sister can always be relied on to provide some crackers, her best though was when my youngest sister (16) put in a request to my mum for some buffalo burgers from the farmers market for tea, my sister overhearing the phone call then went to insist that buffalos were extinct, she was so adamant on this point that she nearly reduced my younger sister to tears and I had to intervene by emailing her with a link to a buffalo farm and a link to the wikipedia page on buffalos.

Her most daft was when she thought that Islam was a country.

This reminds me of one day when I was working check in and I offered a window seat to a little old lady. "oh no dear" she said "I've just had my hair done and I don't want to arrive all windswept"

I worked somewhere that employed a number of placement students (from uni, so they were about 21). One of them came out with some classic one liners - "I like lamb bhuna, can you get chicken lamb bhuna?" and "what alcohol is in a bacardi breezer?"

H - My sister is a bit of a kleptomaniac

Me - Um sweetheart, I think you mean she's a magpie, she likes shiny things but she doesn't steal them.

H - Oh yeah, that sounds right

Me - Hehe, next you'll be telling me you don't know what eejit means.

H - Um, what does it mean?

Me - Gullible

H - Oh, you learn something every day

Me - Wetting myself while rolling on the floor crying with laughter.

This is a man who in charge of a department within a hedgefund and with two degrees.

Two recently from Mr Foo:

On seeing Sainsbury's carrier has a hole in it: 'tsk, I thought it was supposed to be a bag for life?'.

When asked if he wants to go to Oktoberfest this year 'ok, when is it?'.

Don't be too hard on him, it is actually mainly held in September

My friend used to work on the boat link between Jersey and St Malo. One day she got talking to an elderly couple on holiday from Yorkshire, and they said they had really enjoyed their trip and had spent a delightful afternoon in Guernsey the day before, but were surprised to discover that Guernsey only had one tea shop and that you could walk back to Jersey at low tide.

My friend didn't have the heart to tell them they'd probably spent the afternoon at Elizabeth Castle.

Both whilst living and studying in Cape Town, South Africa.

A PhD student asked me where England was ? I told her 'geographically' and she said "oh, so is it in Europe?"!!!

Out drinking one night a girl said "Oh wow, you are English, where from?", I said all over but was born in Cornwall, her response...

"OH MY GOD!! Do you know Pete?"

?

We were watching TV one night and there was a man being interviewed, the caption underneath him said 'Sinn Fein' and I piped up

"Thats not Sinn Fein, Sinn Fein's got a beard" ?

My MIl, but definatly not in a cute way:

whilst eating lamb roast:

"so, when you went out for dinner last night what did you have?"

MrH- venison

MIL- oh god no! you ate a baby? I could never eat a baby animal. thats awful, you're awful. How could you?

me: er, you're eating lamb

MIl- so?

me: well thats a baby

MIL: a baby what?

me: er, sheep.

MIl: what? whats an adult sheep then?

Me: mutton, or wool. Are you really eating something that you have no idea what it is?

MIl; I thought it was a sheep.

Just remembered that on the same business trip, the very same colleague came out with a corker.

We were talking about childhood toys, and the subject of those adorable plush Pound Puppies came up. She then exclaimed, (loudly, on a a busy train), "ooh, yes I remember them. I also had a Pound Pu$$y when I was a child.'

?

Our friend's mum was watching BBC's walking with beasts.

-You don't see many of them about do you?
-Many of what?
-Those hairy elephants.
-[with slight disbelief] They're extinct.
-How are they on telly then?

When all the flooding happened last year, my Mum couldn't understand why it didn't all drain away down the drains. I still rib her now "What about the drains!"

I used to work with someone who wanted to know "How Paracetamol knows where you're hurting"
The girl who sat next to her couldn't work out how her bank "knew" how to divide her money out so that she could get it out in different places (Basically, she thought they gave X to Asda cashpoint etc as to where she got her money out) and if the bank branch burned down would that be all her money gone.

This one's quite cute but, where I work now, we convinced a girl that Google Earth was "live" but with a slight delay, so if she ran outside and back in again, she'd see herself.

I work in travel, and we had to often arrange for people to pick up tickets at the airport. Some people weren't happy with this because "what if someone else uses my tickets" Err, they have your name on, so their name wouldn't match...

A lad we used to work with was moving to Wales. We convinced him they had their own currency called the ram, and told him to make sure he got some from the travel agent before he moved ?

? I always thought google earth was live with a delay too

me to ? and i remember I have asked on here 'how does paracetamol know where to go' and people came out of the woodwork and said they wondered to (and we all got a very good explination form the clever hitchers)?

My sister thought that islands floated, and wondered how they could put them on maps if they moved till she was 15!

I blame Dr Doolittle!

I'll add one of my own. I genuinely didn't realise that the Indiana Jones films weren't set in the present day until pretty recently. I'm not quite sure how I explained the presence of Nazis to myself, perhaps I thought that it was a breakaway faction still in existence and wearing 1940's outfits ?

My friend is dim AND dangerous!

Over a glass of wine, having passed her driving test only a few weeks before:

Her: I almost had an accident at X roundabout today. I think i was in the wrong lane, another driver beeped at me though, i got such a fright.

Me: Don't worry about it, X roundabout is a tricky one, there are so many lanes and the traffic goes so fast.

Her: Yeah, I think i should have been in the left hand lane though, it's just because it was quarter to two so i went in the right hand one.

Me: Eh?

Her: You know, when you're on a roundabout, you have to take the left hand lane in the morning and right hand in the afternoon.

It emerged that her driving instructor had told her to 'think of a roundabout as a clockface - if your exit if AFTER twelve, take the right hand. BEFORE 12, take the left.' She had missed the analogy and taken him quite literally! ?

Theres a story of my sil who was i think in her 20's at the time. family are sat round having their dinner and she out of the blue says" i think im a nymphomaniac" que look of shock of her father n mother n snorts off OH she actually ment hypochondriac or so she says lol