The Herald Diary

by Ken Smith

  PROVING that friends are all heart, a Glasgow reader heard a chap in his local declare that he had talked his pal out of leaving his wife. When the topers around him congratulated him on being so sensitive, he added: “I had to. Otherwise he’d expect me to help him move his stuff out – and he’s three floors up.”

  A DENNISTOUN reader couldn’t help smiling when she heard a chap in her local tell his girlfriend: “Do you know, in the six months we’ve been going out, we’ve not agreed on one thing.”

  “Seven,” she replied.

  A GLASGOW reader swears to us that a young lad in his local bar was telling his pals: “I got a text from the girlfriend saying ‘Love you babe xxx’, and after I replied ‘Love you too’ she said it would mean a lot to her if I started putting Xs at the end of my texts.

  “So I ended my next text with ‘Olivia, Heather, Sophie and Kirsty’ and somehow all hell broke loose.”

  A WEST END woman tells us: “I had a woman’s voice on my car’s GPS giving me instructions on how to get to places, but then I discovered I could change it to a man’s voice. I switched it over to the man, but all it ever said was, ‘It’s around here somewhere. Just keep driving.’”

  A READER at his Ayrshire golf club tells us a fellow member confessed he was not really paying attention when his wife returned from a shopping trip to Glasgow and announced that she had bought a new dress. He glanced up from watching the Masters on the telly and said, “I like the zip down the front. Very sexy.” His wife shouted back, ‘That’s the garment bag it’s in, you idiot.”

  A BEARSDEN reader tells us about married life: “I woke up the other day and told my wife that I’d had a vivid dream in which she was arguing vehemently with me. So she then told me I had probably done something stupid to provoke the argument. And I found myself apologising to my wife for an argument which didn’t actually take place.”

  A WEST END reader heard a young woman triumphantly tell her pals that she was celebrating the three-month anniversary of her new relationship. “Big deal,” replied a pal. “I’ve had dishes in the sink longer than that.”

  TODAY’S daftness comes from a reader who emails: “My girlfriend said she slept with five men before she met me. I was only 20 minutes late.”

  A PIECE of whimsy from a female reader who emails: “Was in the hospital car park with my pal and I said to her, ‘I thought we were here to get your X-ray back?’ She replied, ‘Yes, we are,’ as she slashed a tyre with a Stanley knife. ‘This is his car.’”

  TRICKY thing, that Facebook. It now puts up pictures of events that happened years ago. A Bearsden reader says: “I shouldn’t have commented on an old picture of my wife, ‘You looked a lot better then.’ I know that now.”

  STILL great, but very warm weather. Says Neil: “My wife likes it if I blow on her on days like this – but I’m not a fan.”

  FANTASTIC weather, but the heat can make folk a bit fractious. A reader in the Buchanan Galleries in Glasgow yesterday heard a couple snapping at each other while they walked in front of him until the woman eventually said: “I’m too tired to argue. Carry on without me.”

  TRICKY things, relationships. A Glasgow reader overheard a young beau in his local tell his pals: “Can’t believe it. The girlfriend’s not talking to me – says I ruined her birthday. But I didn’t know it was her birthday so how could I have ruined it?”

  A GLASGOW reader tells us she bumped into an old friend who was single and asked her if she was seeing someone. Her pal replied: “Put it this way, my mobile phone has its own side of the bed.”

  A READER in the West End overhears a woman telling her pal over coffee: “Came home the other day and my husband had cleared out the garage without me asking him to do it. Now I’ve got to try and work out what he’s feeling guilty about.”

  AN AYRSHIRE reader tells us a fellow member in his golf club was telling him the other day: “I opened a kitchen cupboard and managed to catch a glass before it fell out on my head. I just put it back in the same spot to see if my wife’s reflexes are as good as mine.”

  DENTURES. Barrie Crawford tells us: “An old friend of the family couldn’t find her dentures. After searching up and down, she finally discovered her husband’s dentures still in their box and that he was wearing hers. When she chastised him, his only comment was, ‘I wondered why I’d been talking so much!’”

  AN AYRSHIRE reader tells us wives’ birthdays were being discussed in his golf club where one of the members declared: “I forgot my wife’s birthday and told her, ‘You can’t expect me to remember your birthday when you never look any older.’ ”

  “Did that work?” a fellow member asked him.

  “Not in the least,” he admitted.

  THERE are times you have to agree with author Corinne Sullivan, who remarked the other day: “Couple sitting next to each other on the subway, and the woman is talking the man’s ear off about her room-mate when the man goes, ‘Katie, if you don’t mind, I’m going to go into my head for a bit.’ I now have my response to every conversation I want out of forevermore.”

  A GLASGOW reader getting the train into town swears he heard a woman bumping into an old pal tell her: “I recently ended a three-year relationship.” She then added: “It’s OK though, it wasn’t mine.”

  A READER from Bearsden emails: “I was telling my son how technology was making his life a lot easier than mine when I was his age, and when he asked for an example I told him that he will never experience the anxiety of calling a girl’s phone number and having to ask her dad if she’s home.”

  THE trials of married life as an Ayrshire reader emails us: “My wife just said, ‘You weren’t even listening, were you?’ and I thought to myself, ‘What a strange way to start a conversation.’”

  A GLASGOW reader swears to us that he heard a young chap in his local announce: “My girlfriend’s threatening to leave me because she claims I’m more interested in playing poker than in her. I think she’s bluffing.”

  WE bump into an old colleague who swears to us that the letters editor on his newspaper received an epistle from a reader who stated: “My wife was about to file for a divorce when she read an article in your paper about how giving people a second chance was important in making a marriage work. So she changed her mind about the divorce. Anyway, long story short, could you please cancel my online subscription.”

  AN Ayrshire reader passes on a comment from a club member in the bar after a round of golf: “I noticed that the wife had put on her sexy underwear before I came over here, so that can only mean one thing . . .

  “She’s behind with the washing.”

  AH, it will soon be the time for dodgy chat-up lines at office Christmas parties. A reader shook his head last year when he heard a young chap tell a female after work in the pub: “You look great without glasses.”

  “I don’t wear glasses,” she told him, which gave him the opening to put on a pair of glasses and say: “Yes, but I do.”

  WE mentioned the chat-up lines in pubs as office Christmas parties approach, and a reader in Edinburgh says he heard the classic line last year uttered by a woman: “Do you come here often?”

  The chap she was talking to smiled and said: “All the time.”

  “That’s great,” she replied. “In that case, do you know if the barman is seeing anybody?”

  MARRIED life, continued. A chap in a Glasgow golf club tells his mates: “Every Saturday night I watch Strictly Come Dancing with the wife. She turned to me on Saturday and asked me who I wanted to win. Although I’ve watched it every week I couldn’t name a single person who was on it.”

  A GLASGOW reader swears to us that a fellow toper in his local was being asked how his date with someone he met online had gone: “You know she said she had an infectious smile?” he told his pals. “Turned out it was cold sores.”

  A READER says he heard a young chap in the pub at the weekend announce: “I made my girlfriend’s dreams come true by marrying her in a castle, although you wouldn�
��t have thought it from the look on her face as we were bouncing around.”

  YOU can imagine the woe of Josh Billingsley who declares: “My pregnant wife texted me a selfie in a new dress and asked, ‘Does it make my bum look big?’ I texted back, ‘Noo!’ My phone autocorrected my response to ‘Moo!’

  “Please send help!”

  4

  A Class Apart

  Children – they are either driving you demented or you love them to bits.

  Here’s what they’ve been up to.

  WE do like the combination of innocence and deviousness that children sometimes portray. Reader Karen Beckett in Fairlie was recalling a neighbour’s five-year-old who was visiting her who suddenly asked: “Can I have an ice pole?” Karen told her it was polite to wait to be asked. Seconds later the child piped up: “Is there something you want to ask me?”

  A WEST END reader hears a woman gulping Pinot Grigio at the next table to him in an Ashton Lane bar tell her pals: “Every evening my neighbour’s daughter practises piano with what sounds like her face.”

  A WALK through the St Enoch Centre in Glasgow shows a few empty shops as the centre awaits the demolition of the old BHS store at one end and the building of a new cinema and restaurant complex. We still remember a previous stroll through the centre when we passed a mum asking her youngster in the buggy she was pushing for a drink from the carton of juice he was holding, but he wouldn’t hand it over.

  She told him: “I wipe your a***. The least you can do is share your drink.”

  SOMEHOW it was National Biscuit Day yesterday, and a reader recalled: “Do you remember the thrill when you went home as a lad and found a biscuit tin on the kitchen table, and you eagerly opened it up hoping to wolf down a Bourbon or a Custard Cream only to discover your ma’s sewing kit?”

  A GLASGOW teacher tells us she was talking to her primary class about colours and had asked them what their favourite colour was.

  One wee girl said “turquoise” which was a bit different from the others, so the teacher turned to the board and said: “That’s a very good one. How do you spell it?”

  The girl immediately said: “I meant to say red.”

  THE news that the Scottish Government has banned wild animals in travelling circuses reminds us of the teacher who was explaining to her colleagues that she had been to a circus where an elephant was made to wear a skirt while performing.

  “It was a right shame,” said the teacher. “The poor thing was peeing all the time.”

  “Was it incontinent?” asked an anxious colleague.

  “No, it was in Stranraer,” came the reply.

  OLD gag alert as Iain Martin tells us: “With all the news about the rare red moon I am reminded of the teacher explaining about the solar system and asking the class, ‘Where is Mars?’

  “Little Johnnie raises his hand and says, ‘Please, Miss, you’re sitting on it.’”

  STILL enjoying the kids being off school? A Southside reader on the train into town heard these wise words from a woman telling her travelling companion: “Friend on Facebook posted that she was brimming with joy that all her kids were home from school and university just now. You see, it’s lies like that which are putting me off social media.”

  TALKING of teachers, a Southside reader sends us the gag: “I remember my teacher telling me that looking out of the window wouldn’t get me anywhere.

  “Did I have a smug look on my face later on in life when I handed him his burger and fries at the drive-through.”

  WE asked for the best excuses for being late, and Jim McInally tells us: “A few years ago I was teaching at Broughton High School. One morning a student came in late. She had a note from her mother explaining that she was late because mother and daughter had been trapped in the bathroom for an hour by a spider.”

  EXCUSES for being late, continued. A St Andrews reader tells us his dad told him of two brothers who went home from school for their lunch. One of them arrived back late and, when asked why by the teacher, said: “Please, sir, I got the wee spoon the day.”

  THE Herald reported that tickets for Disneyland in America have gone up considerably, with tickets for peak days rising to nearly £100. It reminds us of the teacher who got a phone call from an angry mother who said her son had arrived home from gym without his towel, stating that someone must have taken it and adding: “No one respects other people’s property these days.” Hoping it would turn up, the teacher asked for a description and she said: “Striped, with Disneyland Hotel written on it.”

  OUR trip down memory lane just now is school jotters, and Neil in Ayr recalls: “Talk of whether they were covered in brown paper or wallpaper reminds me of when I was in first year at Kilmarnock Academy and had to cover all my textbooks. I was given some rather floral wallpaper to use, so quickly decided to use it inside out to avoid ridicule in class. However, after a particularly wet walk home found all my books had stuck together and could not be separated. I then realised I had been given pre-pasted wallpaper.

  WE should close the book on our old school-jotter stories, but before we do, Barham Brummage in Bathgate tells us: “During my teaching career I had many different types of covering: wallpaper, brown paper, greaseproof paper, but the one that stands out literally was when I had been nagging a lad to get his jotter covered for several days.

  “Eventually he turned up beaming from ear to lug with a covering of . . . carpet.

  “A good chunk of thick pile had been glued to the front and back. I suppose he would be the only kid who had to Hoover his jotter.”

  MORE on school jotters, as former teacher Jean Miller memorably tells us: “When I had a Primary Three class they wrote a daily news page to encourage their handwriting, grammar, spelling and sentence extension. Didn’t know what to do when a child wrote, ‘I had to get up early today and help my mum push her boyfriend’s van to start before my dad came back.’

  “Sought advice from the Infant Mistress, as they were called in the eighties. She said, ‘Tear it out and say to the child that you are sorry that you spilt your coffee on it at break time.’ So I did.”

  TODAY’S piece of educational daftness comes from a Hillhead reader who emails: “There’s no point using Latin phrases if you don’t understand what they mean, and vice versa.”

  THE Herald news story about the Glasgow teacher who was drunk at school brings to mind, of course, the classic yarn of the teacher being given a box at Christmas with a present in it. The box was leaking so the teacher drew her finger along the bottom, licked it and asked, “White wine?” Replied the youngster, “No, Miss, a puppy.”

  WE read that it is Anti-Bullying Week. A reader in Partick tells us: “The guy who bullied me in secondary school is still taking my lunch money.

  “But to be fair to him, he does give me a pretty big pizza slice in Greggs.”

  SILLY gag time, as Bob Swanston says: “I bought my great nephew an Action Man for his birthday, but he told me that he really wanted a Red Indian.

  “Since then I’ve been trying to put a brave face on it.”

  A YOUNG person explains to us how life has changed: “When I was very young, the most terrifying part of going into the sea when on holiday was thinking that a shark might attack you. Now my biggest fear is leaving my phone on the beach.”

  OUR trip down memory lane this week was old school jotters, and a reader reminds us of the teacher who gathered in her class’s jotters and discovered one lad had scrawled the sectarian slogan “UVF 1690” on it. He then diminished the impact somewhat by adding “Remember the Boing”.

  TODAY’S peace of daftness comes from a Lenzie reader who says: “Took the family up to Aberfoyle at the weekend. Son staring out the window at the fields suddenly announces, ‘Didn’t realise so many sheep were into paintballing.’”

  A LENZIE reader muses: “I passed a restaurant the other day that had a sign saying ‘Kids Eat Free’ and I thought to myself, ‘Kids always eat free.’

  “I mean, when I take m
y brood to the restaurant never once has one of them put his hand on the bill and said, ‘Don’t worry, Dad, I’ll get this.’”

  AN excitable news report in The Herald claimed that families travelling to the beach at Troon were “terrorised by hundreds of drunken youths”. A Glasgow reader tells us: “Many years ago I witnessed absolutely disgusting behaviour on Troon beach. I saw a man and woman having an almighty argument in front of loads of kids.

  “Suddenly the woman smacked the chap on the head and it all kicked off. There was a massive brawl and someone called the police. This poor officer turned up on his own and took out his baton to the man. Then the chap snatched the baton and hit the police officer. Then, out of nowhere, a crocodile crept up and stole all the sausages.”

  A POLLOKSHIELDS mother confesses: “My three-year-old asked if he could have for his breakfast the Maltesers his grandma gave him the previous day when she called round.

  “I emphatically told him he could not, saying it would be bad for his teeth and inappropriate for breakfast.

  “My argument was probably strengthened by the fact I had eaten them the night before when he was in bed and I was watching my favourite hospital drama on the telly.”