I may very well qualify as a full-blown dyslexic. Like George Bush

AS A small girl I was marshalled into daily attendance of Greek School. All the other little children went home after school, or to netball, or to the devil as far as I was concerned. But I went to Props. That's the term of endearment that we poor victims of the parental nationalist agenda used to soften our daily linguistic regime.

Props had devised several tortures to ensure the survival of the Greek tongue among the little children of the diaspora, not least the dreaded ingestion of lentil soup, after which we took the daily orthographic test.

For those of you not familiar with this particular trial and tribulation of early youth, the common definition of orthography is the art or study of correct spelling. In Greek.

Needless to say, I was a terrible cheat. My dear friend and I would lay out the passage to be tested very discreetly between us and practise our excellent transcription technique.

Sometimes we would get caught and I would have to explain to the teacher that my mother had very specific instructions regarding corporal punishment. She was the only one allowed to administer it.

So much for Greek spelling. But I fear my English spelling is not very orthographic either. In fact, I may very well qualify as a full-blown dyslexic. Like George Bush. This is a bad, bad thing for a girl in my line of employment. And not only because of the random association with Dubya. For example, I have serious issues with where and were. Where my were's should have been, I was.

And this morning I realised that for the life of me I cannot see the point of two t's in tattoo. Why two and not one? It changes the pronunciation not one jot, not even a fraction of a jot. You do not say tat - too. You say tatoo. So why two t's, I ask?

I specifically ask "amandzing". Yes, you, "amandzing" - because you very kindly pointed out my spelling foible, moments after I made it public on my blog.

What, you very reasonably asked, is a tatoo? I then looked at your blog with your "amandzing" poetry and am feeling considerably better. Because "amandzing", I was blushing really hard about that tatoo. And then I realised that we all have our faults and yours is a failure to use the apostrophe. Ever. Never ever.

Perhaps you have a question too. Yours is about the relevance of that silly little elevated and inverted comma. Contractions and possessives be damned. People will work it out eventually.

Still, I feel appropriately chastened. Should you wish to chastise me further, contact my mother. I am sure she will be administering a little corporal punishment. Because, and here is my final confession, I have been cheating on my spelling tests for as long as I can remember.

It's called spellcheck and without it - well, you know what happens without it.