This is perhaps a post I should not write. When my father had finished reading Good Vibrations, his first comment was that there were quite a few typos. I was a slightly put out by his comment. I had re-read the manuscript of my comical taleย very carefully to try and spot any deviations from correct English usage and had managed to find quite a few which I duly corrected. I knew that somewhere within the 300 pages that I had produced there would be others but that they would be few and far between. My father’s comment did however make me wonder. Unfortunately, he hadn’t noted down the errors so I was really none the wiser as to where they were.
Marcello, the guy who had hosted me when I stayed in Rome for two nights, has come to my rescue. He is, of course Italian and English is his second language but he has managed to find some obvious, but interestingly, some not so obvious errors. Some of them are careless; “straight forward” rather than “straightforward“, “i made”, “c,est pas possible” & “round-about“. I should have spotted them myself. A few others are just as careless but perhaps require a moment of thought; I needed “principle” in one sentence not “principal” and when referring to a steep downhill section of road it was a “descent” not, of course “decent“. Hand on heart however, I’m really not sureย whether I would have found some of the others that he has spotted. I wrote “pouring over maps“. It looks OK, no? Well in factย the correct spelling isย “poring over maps“. I never knew that. Have you even taken up the “reigns“? Well, you shouldn’t have!ย You should have been reaching for the “reins”ย instead. 
Most embarrassing as a French teacherย who hasย escorted dozens of teenagers along the Boulevard de Clichy in Paris is my mis-spelling of Pigalle; not “Pigaille”. I am genuinely impressed by Marcello’s mastery of the English language. The worrying thing is that so far he has only got as far as day seven of my journey. I fear a few more cringe-worthy corrections to come.
If you have read the book and have spotted anything that needs changing, please let me know. I shall blush in private. And if you haven’t yet purchased, please don’t let it put you off; of the 110,000 words, on current estimates, only one in two thousand contains an error. Sorry… I’ll make sure that the Kindle version of the book is updated as soon as possible.
