The Herald Diary

by Ken Smith

  AS the Burns Suppers wind down, Ian Lyell tells us: “At the Mauchline Burns Club, events organiser Malcolm Noble, before the meal, asked the company very solicitously if all those who were diabetic could raise their hand. Several did. Malcolm’s response, ‘Well, you won’t need the tablet on your plate. Pass it to somebody else.’”

  YOU’VE got to love Hue and Cry singer Pat Kane for his somewhat pretentious use of language. He took to social media this week to declare: “Wean 2 and I laughing and crying at Paddington last night. But weird ideologically. Immigration references obvious, but liberal middle class is near sanctified here and Daddy Brown clearly involved in financial innovation that unravels the very social pluralism they proclaim.”

  Understandably someone had to comment: “Mate, it’s a film about a talking bear.”

  A READER coming out of Cineworld in Glasgow tells us of the chap in front of him who had just left a screening and told the girl with him that he had found some of the film hard to believe. When she asked him what he meant he replied: “Well, that bit where he’s in a hotel room and immediately knows how the shower works.”

  A READER in Arizona of all places sends us a link to a joke page in her local newspaper which tells us about our national drink: “I went to the liquor store Friday afternoon on my bicycle, bought a bottle of Scotch and put it in the bicycle basket. As I was about to leave, I thought to myself that if I fell off the bicycle, the bottle would break. So I drank all the Scotch before I cycled home.

  “It turned out to be a very good decision because I fell off my bicycle seven times on the way home.”

  EVERYONE can find it difficult making small talk with strangers at parties and business meetings. Former Edinburgh Fringe performer Cal Wilson from New Zealand recalled her most memorable encounter: “Once, as I started talking to a guy, I went to take a sip of my drink and the straw went straight up one nostril. I quickly lowered my glass, but the straw stayed in. He definitely noticed, because when I pulled the straw out, my nose started bleeding. In terms of getting his attention, it definitely worked a treat.”

  AS others see us. The American news network NBC has been discussing the introduction of minimum alcohol pricing in Scotland, and, after a detailed explanation of Scotland’s difficulties with booze, it went out to pubs to get the reactions of punters. In the Abbotsford Bar in Rose Street, Edinburgh, NBC talked to Rhona, aged 50, who disagreed with First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s assessment that Scotland had an alcohol problem. “She had no right saying that. I don’t think it’s true,” said Rhona. NBC then added the helpful description: “Rhona is with a bachelorette party drinking rum and Cokes. The bride-to-be, having drunk too much earlier, is back at the hotel already.”

  OUR whisky stories reminded George Maxwell in Lochgilphead of his younger brother, when 17, being an apprentice painter and having to work at a distillery in Dumbarton. Says George: “I got home to be told by our mother I should have seen the state of my brother who had come home the previous evening ‘drunk as a monkey’.

  “Turned out there was a pail of whisky at the distillery and everyone could help themselves by dipping a cup in. He told our mother his condition was caused by breathing in the fumes at the distillery, and our mother believed him.”

  As all mothers should.

  HADN’T seen a colleague for a few days and assumed he had been snowed in at home. But he caught up with me yesterday to declare: “My dad's answer to everything was alcohol.” After a suitable pause he added: “He didn't drink – he was just rubbish at quizzes.”

  9

  I’ll Vote for That

  Politics seemed to be seeping into every corner of Scottish life, whether it was worries about Brexit, whether there should be a second independence referendum or what Trump was up to in America. Readers sent us their observations.

  IRVINE Weavers held their annual meeting and dinner at the weekend when former MP Brian Donohoe recalled fellow Labour MP and Deputy Speaker Harold Walker once telling him that he was delivering leaflets at an election. It was shortly after a Tory canvasser had been too lazy to push the Tory leaflets right through the letterbox, so Harold would take them out and stuff them in his pocket.

  Disaster struck when he arrived at one door and, looking round, realised that he had walked through the wet cement of a newly laid driveway. Harold quickly took a Tory leaflet out of his pocket, shoved it through the letterbox and made his escape.

  AS worries continue about a hard Brexit, former Labour councillor Alan Stewart sees the news story about Prime Minister Theresa May welcoming the British cave divers who helped rescue the 12 boys in Thailand to Downing Street and asks: “Any chance of them getting us rescued from the dark, isolated, resourceless cavern that will be a Tory Brexit?” But some folk are trying to be positive. As Glasgow stand-up Frankie Boyle put it: “Boring to moan about the downside of Brexit. Let’s focus on the exciting possibilities – living in an abandoned motorway services; coming up with a tasty recipe for fox; marrying a 3D-printed rifle; trading sexual favours for insulin, and vice versa – none of it will be dull.”

  former Glasgow MP Tom Harris has resigned from the Labour Party. It reminds John Henderson: “In the late eighties when I was the Labour agent in affluent Bath, Ken Loach, the left-wing filmmaker of Cathy Come Home fame, decided to hold a press conference to renounce his party membership, as he felt Neil Kinnock was moving the party too much to the centre.

  “The trouble was, I had to inform Loach and the press that it was a bit difficult for me to react to him leaving because, despite several written reminders, he hadn’t paid his membership fees for three years, so technically he didn’t have a membership to renounce.”

  AS many folk fear the worst if there is a hard Brexit, Russian Dmitri Grabov, now living in London, tries to be positive: “Don’t let Project Fear scare you. I grew up with empty supermarkets and two-hour food queues in Moscow. Some days you got flour, other days you got cheese, maybe once a month you got sugar. The element of surprise made shopping incredibly exciting. You folks are in for a treat.”

  MUCH talk of protests when President Trump visits Scotland this month. Leo Kearse says: “Trump’s unpopular in Scotland because they don’t trust anyone who lives to 70.”

  STILL trying to understand American politics after President Trump backtracks on separating the children of illegal immigrants from their parents. His daughter Ivanka Trump praised her dad, stating: “Thank you, President, for taking critical action ending family separation at our border.” But as Dan Pfeiffer replied to her: “You don’t thank the kidnapper for releasing the hostages.”

  EVEN physicist and TV presenter Professor Brian Cox has entered the Brexit debate. As he memorably put it: “You can convince people to vote to abolish gravity, but they will be very p****d off with you when they hit the ground.”

  A READER sees the headline in The Observer ‘Replace May with Gove’ and gets in touch to say, “Tried it out. March, April, Gove, June, July. Nope, don’t think it works.”

  SNP MP for Livingston Hannah Bardell was speaking at Westminster, where she said the Tory government was in a fankle over Brexit. The reporters at Hansard, which publishes Westminster debates, wrote to her asking: “The Hansard reporters would be grateful for the answer to the following specific query. Tangle? Fankle.” Hannah was able to reassure them that “fankle” was a good Scottish word. It reminds us of when the late Tommy Graham, the rather gruff-speaking working-class Renfrewshire MP, spoke in Parliament. Not a word was understood by the poor Hansard staff who simply sent a request to Tommy to give them his written speech, which appeared in next day’s Hansard verbatim.

  SO what’s been happening in England? A reader shows us an exchange on social media where a young woman reported: “Off tomorrow for Poland Day. Never heard of it.” This prompted an angry chap to reply: “And we don’t get a day off for St George’s Day. What a joke this place is.” Someone else wrote it was “pathetic” and another decried: “Nothing great about Brit
ain these days.”

  Before the exchanges got even more heated, a friend added the explanation: “Are you sure it’s not Polling Day, hun?”

  GLASGOW stand-up Janey Godley received much publicity for holding up a very rude sign when Donald Trump last visited Scotland. It contained a word not used in respectable society. Anyway Janey has revealed: “Two Tories in my comedy gig tonight. Man smugly shouts, ‘I hear you swear a lot. What’s your worst word? Go on, let me hear it. We all know you are famous for saying it.’ I reply, ‘Foodbanks.’ Audience cheers. Man sits raging.”

  IT’S the 20th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland. The late Mo Mowlam was Irish Secretary at the time, and we remember Mo at a book event in Glasgow years later telling us that she called her personal protection officers in Ireland “Shirleys”. She went on to explain: “Whenever I suggested going anywhere remotely dodgy, they would always say to me, ‘Shirley not, Minister.’” She also gave a talk at the Royal Concert Hall in Glasgow, where a woman in the audience gave her the very Glasgow compliment: “Mo, I enjoyed your talk more than I thought I would.” She went on to ask for Mo’s views on proportional representation, and Mo said she was all for it. The lady said: “I didn’t enjoy your talk after all,” and sat down.

  LABOUR MSP Neil Findlay has launched his book Socialism & Hope, which has a foreword by party leader Jeremy Corbyn. Our attention is drawn, however, to a tale about the late great West Lothian MP Tam Dalyell, who once drove to a Labour Party conference with his breeks at his ankles. He confided to Neil it meant he arrived without his trousers being badly creased.

  WE are still trying to make sense of the faltering Brexit negotiations. Quintin Forbes tries to help by rewriting an old saying: “Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Give a man a fishing rod and he is preparing for Brexit.”

  POLITICS in Britain is a bit mental just now. As Tory MP Anna Soubry said yesterday: “There must be something not quite right in your life when 45 minutes in a dentist’s chair having a rather large root canal filling becomes a relaxing lie down and thinking time.”

  And it’s not any better in America. Entertainer Bette Midler caustically put it: “This will be the first time a President looks exactly the same his whole time in office, while the rest of us visibly age due to the stress his lousy job puts us through.”

  THE original BBC news flash about that terrible poisoning of the former Russian spy said it had occurred in Sainsbury’s, and not Salisbury, before it was changed. Says Patricia Watson: “It reminds me of when, at the height of The Beatles’ fame, the BBC announced on the lunchtime news that Ringo Starr had had his toenails removed. By the Six O'Clock News the BBC was able to reassure the nation it was his tonsils that he had relinquished.”

  TSB chief executive Paul Pester is the latest business boss to go before a select committee of MPs and perform woefully, showing how little empathy he has for poor customers struggling with a botched IT system.

  He told MPs that customers upset with the bank should use the bank’s online complaint form rather than social media as “Everyone enjoys tweeting, but it is shouting into the void.”

  Says reader and TSB customer John Henderson: “As a customer, I know the feeling Mr Pester – just like being put on indefinite hold on your TSB telephone helpline.”

  TALKING of MPs, many of them have taken to social media, but make comments that are dull, boring and unforgettable. So well done to the new Tory MP in Eastwood, Paul Masterton, who welcomed the sunny weather yesterday afternoon by declaring on Twitter: “Remember, on days like today, do your bit for humanity and check in on any ginger neighbours to make sure they have sufficient supplies of total block and a sun hat.”

  THE Herald reported that the Donald Trump-owned Turnberry Hotel has banned Irn-Bru. Reader Ian Barnett muses: “I cannot help thinking that The Donald believes it is actually called Iran Brew.”

  10

  Head for the Sunshine

  Away from work or the pub, readers have been enjoying their holidays, and they tell us when something happens to make them laugh.

  EDINBURGH has been voted the top cruise-ship destination in Britain. It reminds us of the cruise-ship worker who told us he got a call at the ship’s reception desk from an angry customer who said they had paid extra for a cabin with an ocean view but all they could see was a car park.

  “We haven’t sailed yet, sir,” the crew member had to gently explain.

  HOLIDAYMAKERS are now returning home, a little bit annoyed if they’re being honest that the weather was so good in Scotland while they were away. Anyway, we are a bit sympathetic towards the young chap on a bus into Glasgow, overheard by a reader, who told a young woman who asked if he wanted to see her holiday pictures: “Unless you got attacked by a shark, then I’ll pass.”

  And a Bearsden reader confides to us: “The wife packed her running gear saying she might go for a few early morning runs on holiday. That’s the fifth year in a row she’s done that. Never used it yet.”

  A BEARSDEN reader tells us she was at a dinner party where a doctor was loudly pontificating about his holidays before turning to his work and remarking that he had to put a patient into an induced coma. “What did you do?” asked a fellow dinner guest. “Tell him about your trip to India?”

  YES, a sunny bank holiday in Scotland, which could only mean throngs of screeching teenagers invading Troon beach, and police being called to the first sailing of the season for that great paddle steamer The Waverley as too many folk had turned it into a booze cruise. Our mind wanders to the time when a crew member on The Waverley would occasionally perform the trick of catching a seagull by holding a piece of bread over the deck-rail and grabbing it by its feet. He would then march past startled passengers to the galley, shouting: “Chef, I’ve got that extra chicken you needed.”

  LOTS of tourists about. David Russell tells us he and a pal arrived at an Edinburgh bus stop where two Australian girls were studying the printed timetable. Says David: “We stood behind them and, shielding our eyes from the sun’s glare, checked the digital ‘real-time’ board which sits on an adjacent, higher pole. ‘Next one is not for 20 minutes,’ we told them. The girls looked at us askance. ‘How can you tell just by looking at the sky?’ one asked.”

  TALKING of authors, many of us can identify with writer Jill Mansell, who was telling folk: “Just spent ages booking a holiday apartment online. It then flashed up that the place was no longer available. I was furious for an hour, until I realised it was no longer available because I’d booked it.”

  OUR tales of B&Bs remind Willie McLean in Dumbarton: “Two driving examiners sent to a Scottish island were staying at a large guest house in the attic bedrooms. The rooms were not en suite, and when they retired for the night they realised the toilets were on the ground floor. One of them decided that rather than go down and back up three flights of stairs he would do the necessary from the attic window. At breakfast they complimented the owner on the quality of the tea, and he told them, ‘I tell my clients that it’s not the tea, it’s the water. We use the rainwater from the roof, which we collect in the big butt in the garden.’”

  QUITE a small subset of Diary stories, but nonetheless our tale of having to wee out of a B&B attic window reminds Ken Johnson: “When I was a lot younger I woke in an attic room with an urgent need. I knew there was a toilet on that floor but couldn’t remember which door, so the window in the gable beckoned. A terrible rattling sound was heard and I realised that there was an outhouse below with a corrugated iron roof. Stopping was not an option, so I had to carry on, hoping no one would hear the racket. When someone remarked to the landlady at breakfast that they heard heavy rain overnight, she said that the ground was dry. Maybe it was my imagination but I thought she was looking at me as she said it.”

  WE mentioned it was National B&B Day tomorrow, and a reader recalls the late Donald Dewar, when First Minister, speaking at a dinner where he said he was staying at a B&B where the
honey was served at breakfast in a tiny jar. Donald said he couldn’t resist using the Chic Murray line to the owner: “I see you keep a bee.”

  JOHN Parker adds to our B&B stories: “In the late eighties Coatbridge teens travelled to Blackpool for the September weekend and the chance of a hedonistic time.

  “On arrival at the B&B that promised us a beachfront view, we were led to a dingy room that was sub-divided with gyprock into ever smaller spaces.

  “One safety-minded friend asked where the fire escape was and was directed to a window with a rope snaking out, tied to a radiator below the window.

  “The landlady said, ‘Be careful, boys and girls – one at a time down the rope.’”

  BUS tours, a story. Kate Woods, now in America, tells us: “One of my male relatives was given a ‘stag’ bus trip in Scotland, visiting many pubs up the west coast with his male friends. As the coach was driving up the side of Loch Awe, the driver said that usually he drove groups of elderly holidaymakers and as he had an all-male group he was going to give the information that he always wanted to give. He then switched to his tour-guide voice and said if the passengers would look out the left-hand side they would see the magnificent and scenic Loch Awe. He then added, ‘And, gentlemen, if you now look out the right-hand side you will be greeted with a wonderful view of ‘F*** Awe’.”