THE DIARY MONDAY JUNE 22, 2009

READER David MacDonald ponders on the appropriateness of the WH Smith branch in Glasgow's Sauchiehall Street last week putting the book The Crimes of Josef Fritzl in a display of suggested books for Father's Day presents.

Apart from Josef hardly being a great role model, we fear that someone will tell us that the book could become a "best cellar".

Emotionally charged
OUR mention of Stow College's 75th anniversary reminds Alan Stewart of the late folk singer Ron McLaughlin, who was also a lecturer at Stow and who formed a folk-group with fellow staff called, well it would be, the Stowaways.

Says Alan: "One of Ron's songs was the Stow College Talking Blues which had the superb rhyming couplet: "Even in the morning when the sun has just risen/it still manages to look like Barlinnie Prison."

Sung with affection, of course.

Uphall struggle
CONFUSION over addresses continued. Richard Treadgold tells us he has twice been stopped in Edinburgh by lorry drivers seeing directions to "Yoofal". On the first occasion he had to read the delivery note to discover they were looking for Uphall in West Lothian.

Change for a tenor
AND Maggie Wood was working in hospital radio when a patient asked for a song by the great American Italian tenor Mario Lanza.

The request was passed on to the sound library where Maggie was told: "I'm sorry but we couldn't find anything by that Irish singer you asked for, Marie O'Lanza."

Comet off course
A BRIDGE of Weir reader ordered a sat nav online and went to pick it up at Comet's Greenock store. He walked into the showroom, clutching his printed order, and waited impatiently for service. Eventually he stopped a passing staff member and curtly asked where he could pick up the sat nav.

She glanced at the order and replied: "Well, not here, sir. This is Curry's - Comet is across the square."

Red-faced he slunked out, realising he really did need that sat-nav.

No flies on him
A READER watches the news footage of President Obama chopping the insect the got in his way and asks: "What happened to the security services? Are they not supposed to have a no fly zone' around the president?"

All bets are off
The online encyclopaedia Wikipedia, written by the public, can have a homely feel at times. Reader David Williams commends to us the entry on the old Ayrshire mining village of Mossblown, which tells us: "Mossblown is a tight-knit community where everyone knows everyone else's business. If there is something you need to know, use a suitable excuse like say, a box of matches or paper, and use the local Spar shop which will supply you with all the info you need, e.g. who's died or is going to, who's fighting who and who won, and even simple trivia like, when's the next bus.

"Then there is the bookies, where the local betting correspondents couldn't back themselves into a corner."

Splendid.

Blade punner
WE overhear a young chap in Glasgow tell his mates that he was stopped by the police in the city centre who wanted to check what he was carrying and asked if he had any sharp objects on him.

"Only my wit, I told them," he cockily announced.

But we bet he didn't.