Insane shop-window sign

Spotted in @carriebish's Twitter, this insane and menacing shop-window sign about an improbable sky-diving trip and a fraught marriage.

• [voiceinthedistance]

  Free falling from 1500 feet?  I’ve got a bad feeling about this.  

• [endymion]

  It’s definitely a crazy sign, but I don’t think that it’s menacing, or that it suggests the marriage is fraught. I thought it was all sweet, actually (although certainly crazy). I thought the “by accident of course” was just cute.

  • [CharredBarn]

    Looks like he initially wrote “totally” by accident, and then decided any mishap would be an accident, just not a total one.

• [Matthew]

  So, will they be open on Oct 24th or the 25th?

• [Caitlin]

  If this is a British sign, that’s just how they express their crazy sense of humor.  He probably doesn’t have a wife.  However, my theory was shot down by the fact that he says 1500 FEET….

  • [retepslluerb]

    If you look at the poster’s feed you’ll find two “a fish and chip shop in duffield in derbyshire”-replies so I guess that this refers to the sign

  • [Andy Kwong]

    3 clues point to a British sign. First, @carriebish appears to have pics of an event related to Essex County Council from just a few days ago. Second, the date is written as 24th Oct., instead of Oct. 24th. Thrid, if you look closely at the houses in the reflection, you can see quite clearly a row of terraced houses that is distinctly British in style.

    BTW, distance is measured in feet, yards and miles in Britain still. Height, on the other hand is usually metres nowadays, but feet is also used.

    • [nosehat]

      Also, the second to last line of the sign to the right starts with the British pounds currency sign.  

• [Avram Grumer]

  Hope he doesn’t sample too much of the sherry while packing up her chute. 

• [Blunderbutt]

  This is exactly the kind of situation that results in a ripcord being pulled and four bottles of sherry coming out instead of a parachute.

  Fortunately, this is also exactly the kind of situation that ends in a large pile of hay or an open-roofed pillow factory.

• [David Neil]

  Yeah, you don’t free fall from 1500 feet.  You static line jump from 1500, but freefall…you’d barely get a few seconds before you’d have to pull the rip.  

• [Guest]

  Talk about ‘a leap of faith’. 

  I don’t know about ‘insane’ or ‘fraught’, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Duncan is fond of sherry too.

• [TooGoodToCheck]

  4 pints of sherry sounds like a hell of a lot.  Like, I would likely be throwing up if I tried.

• [peromyscus]

  Especially unnerving is the Greengrocer’s Apostrophe in _height’s_. 

• [Guest]

  perhaps he has Cory’s sense of decimal places, and meant 15,000 feet?

  • [Haakon IV]

    Hope he’s more carefult “checking her equipment,” then.

• [laurasbadideas]

  I wouldn’t worry about the skydiving. Chugging half a gallon of sherry is probably a lot more dangerous, even if you do it on solid ground.

• [Steve Nordquist]

  This is the decent independent signage I go to Colorado to see; but usually that stuff makes excess sense over time. Clearly if he -can- equip her to drink 4 pints of sherry during 3 seconds of free-fall (unless they get an EC credit for most of 9m/ss, free fall in water…not so uncommon for cleansing routines, or represent El Reg’s Federated Free Space Colonies) that will accredit them to work for spec. for the sherry industry. [Ducks Xeni's soft-landing sherry bottle.] Also posible; sherry-injection backpressure-mediated descent into silo.

  Good luck making it work, you two. Nice sign.

• [AwesomeRobot]

  I’m a professional crazy interpreter: I’m going to get my wife drunk and push her out of a plane with a parachute I packed incorrectly. 

  • [naam]

    That’s how I read it too! Very nicely crafted message. Funny how most of the messages are about what country this is in, or how hard drinking sherry while freefalling would be, while there’s a murderplot to be solved, guys!

• [pox]

  “…pack her chute…” Uhuh huh huh huh.

• [Shibi_SF]

  Somebody please go check in on this shop, Duncan and his wife tomorrow!

• [mistwolf]

  I also didn’t find it at all menacing. This is exactly the kind of joke I would make to and about my wife in that kind of situation, and she about me. I admit we have twisted senses of humor, though, so I am not the best judge, but I doubt anyone really read that and thought their marriage was ‘fraught’.

• [IamInnocent]

  Drinking from a plastic bottle I hope, one she can press upon, because in a free fall the sherry won’t come out of the bottle easily if at all.

• [taj]

  This is exactly the kind of sign I’d put up if I just wanted to close up shop for a week’s holiday and wanted people to keep coming back rather than find a new place while I was away.

• [snagglepuss]

  I think he’s a Brit. ‘Cause I don’t hardly know any Americans who will drink sherry if there’s ANYTHING else around.

  • [Shibi_SF]

    I have always assumed that UK-sherry is better than US-sherry.  Are we missing out on something (like good drinkin’ sherry?), being on this side of the pond??

• [matthewflint]

  When I jump, I’m like my parachute to be fully open by 2000 feet.

  But maybe she’s more daring than me ;-)

  I often fall 800 feet in the time it takes my canopy to open, let’s call it 1000 with a bit of contingency. That leaves 1500 feet for drinking the sherry. From zero vertical speed, you’ll fall 1500 feet in about 12 seconds.

  Four pints of sherry in 12 seconds? Tough. It’ll probably need to be through a straw too, unless you want to spill most of it.

  They really haven’t thought this through. :-/

• [Ben Daniel]

  heights.

• [Tom B]

  Well, this is a great sign from a marketing perspective. Everyone is interested and I’m sure his regulars will get a belly laugh out of it. Pure marketing genius! 

• [BoogerFree]

  So is she just going to toss her 4 empties to hit innocent people below?