THE Glasgow Phoenix Choir's Spring concert, at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall on April 24, celebrates the launch of two new CDs recorded in Iona Abbey.
Reader Jim Slavin, however, isn't too sure about the reference to the 'haunting voice' of guest singer Karen Matheson, given that the concert is being sponsored by The Co-operative Funeral Care.
BEST men at weddings: they sure know how to make an impact. At one wedding last weekend, the best man stood up and uttered one word: "Fornication."
The guests froze in their seats. The groom and best man had army backgrounds. Was the wedding about to be tainted with bawdy army humour?
After an eternity, the best man continued his speech. "Fornication like this," he said, "it is only fitting ...."
JOB titles that flatter to deceive. Tim Brown says he met a friend after an absence of many years and after the usual polite questions about family, asked what the man was doing with himself these days. He replied that he was a transparent wall maintenance engineer. Further enquiry elicited the fact that he was a window cleaner.
TOM Keenan, social worker and author (his debut novel, The Father, is out now) once worked as a television engineer. A customer rang to complain that her TV only worked from about 6pm each night.
At her flat, Tom saw there was no power reaching the telly. Checking the cable, he found an extension connection secured by Elastoplasts. Still no power. Following the cable out into the hall, he found another Elastoplast connection. Still no power.
Mystified, he saw that the cable snaked up a wall and out through a broken pane above the door into the close. It was connected by a light fitting into the close light, the bulb of which had been removed. The penny dropped. The woman's TV only came on when the close lights came on at night.
COLLECTIVE nouns, more of. Ian Gilbert says that in former times in the RAF a coach full of pregnant WAAFs was known as "the blunder bus."
Stuart Yeamans says he once served on a ship where the collective noun for the pursers was 'a fiddle of pursers' and for the deck officers 'a packet of mates'.
From the orchestral world, via Gordon Rigby, we learn of A Lack of Principals and A Thicket of Percussionists.
And a reader known only as Anon volunteers: "A colleague and I were watching a dog-collared crowd making their way up the Mound in Edinburgh during the General Assembly, so I jokingly asked him, 'I wonder what the collective noun is for a bunch of Church of Scotland Ministers?'
"'A surplus,' he replied, instantly."
WEARY of Katie Hopkins' calculating way of attracting headlines? Film director Jon S Baird has an answer: "Instead of Trident," he tweets, "couldn't we have Katie Hopkins and [Jeremy] Clarkson strapped to some fireworks as a deterrent? Not even Putin would want those 2!"
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