The learned Will mentioned 'flora and fauna but forums' as though 'florums' and 'faunums' were a possibility.

Flora and Fauna were goddesses so there was nothing to pluralize.

As for conjugating and shagging - what's wrong with having it all?

Anwulf -
In fact I said that Americans retain the old-fashioned pronunciation of 'solder' as 'soda'.
'Soldier' would indeed have formerly been pronounced 'sojer' - by all classes.

Will, was that a deliberate error to keep us on our toes?

Both are fine. "Five eggs is too much" is short for "The amount of five eggs is too much."
Three hundred pounds is too fat.
A million dollars a year is not enough.

I.m sure it's all right idiomatically. I think the reason it sounds odd is that 'I have gone' suggests a completed act rather than continuous action.

The scandal in Europe over the origin of meat probably does mean that I've literally eaten a horse - a whole one by now, I should think.
But I've never tried to eat one metaphorically. I'm not sure how I'd go about it.

To me, 'reach out' smacks of feel-good Oprah-speak.

British authors in the past eschewed latinate words on the grounds that they were generally too fancy but they used latinate sentence structure. Latin was taught in schools from the age of about seven (that's when I began) and the logic and clarity of Latin sentence organization was widely accepted.

Geoffthing - fifty-six? - you're just a baby! No wonder you've got it wrong!