His china

WE asked about telling folk what you do for a living and Peter Warren tells us: "In the 1960s I worked as an apprentice plater in Fairfield's shipyard when I met my future wife at the Locarno. When we started dating she asked me what I worked at, and I told her I was a plater. Sometime later she asked me if there was any chance of getting her Ma a half tea set.

"Coming up for 49 years married in August."

Time for change

OUR stories about telling folk your job stems from conversations at parties and receptions. Says Gordon Smith: "I was at a conference a few years ago when a delegate told a rather tedious story about how he got to where he was today. A fellow delegate asked him, with a look of utter sincerity, 'So if if you could change anything about yourself, what would it be – apart from the obvious?' Conversation over."

Took the plunge

SHOULD I be apologising for this? Anyway, A Bishopbriggs reader tells us that when Zinedine Zidane handed in his notice as manager to the board of Spanish football club Real Madrid, he was told: "Zidane, you're rocking the boat."

For God's sake

THE Herald obituary on showbiz writer Gordon Irving at the grand age of 99, reminds us of the neatly typed letters Gordon used to send the Diary from his home in the west end's Kelvin Court, courteously telling us a neat yarn about an old music hall act who had been in the news. Gordon was also a collector of classic jokes and once told of the young reporter from Glasgow who was flown out by his newspaper to cover the after-effects of a particularly violent earthquake in southern Europe. Getting a bit full of himself he filed a graphic story that opened with the colourful prose: "God sat on a mountain-top here today, and looked down on a scene of ..." The reporter got a cable back from his editor in Glasgow declaring: "Forget earthquake. Interview God."

On a Rolls

GLASGOW City Council is in the news for accepting a gift of a two-year-old Rolls-Royce Ghost from an anonymous benefactor for the Lord Provost to be driven around in. The council used to have a Roller for the LP but it was retired after 30 years and donated to the Transport Museum because it kept on breaking down and required very expensive repairs or dodgy repairs such as injecting concrete into the disintegrating bodywork. The then Lord Provost Alex Mosson tried to be positive by explaining: "True, it sometimes broke down – but Glasgow folk thought that was funny.''

Incidentally, when The Herald reported that the old Rolls-Royce was being retired a BMW salesman phoned the Lord Provost's office offering a lease deal on a Beamer. God loves a trier.

Saucy

THE old Heinz stalwart, bottles of Salad Cream, are being rebranded as Sandwich Cream as fewer folk are actually putting it on salads. Not everyone is impressed. As Scott Buchan said: "Sandwich cream? Just because salad cream is not used on salads? I don’t put my tomato sauce on tomatoes either. Better change that name too."

Let your hair down

TODAY'S piece of daftness comes from a Glasgow reader who emails: "So, when she said she wanted a ‘fairy-tale’ romance, she didn’t actually want me to eat her grandma or lock her in a tower? Dating is hard."