Thanks but no thanks

CHRISTINE Pacione is puzzling over Amazon’s idea of personalised advertising. It emailed her to say that people who bought the same ink cartridge as she did also purchased wild bird dried mealworms and wild bird suet. Oh, and for some reason, sterile cleansing wipes ...

Feather-brained

AN intriguing collection of dating disasters on the image-sharing website Imgur has been attracting thousands of hits.

One guy went out with a woman he’d met online. After dinner, she invited him to her apartment to introduce him to her cats. All 27 of them. Another couple went on a date and afterwards they strolled back to her car, only to find it ablaze. (The woman’s ex “was just a little bit crazy”.) The Diary’s favourite concerns a date arranged via Tinder. The woman invited the bloke to her place for drinks and a movie, but her behaviour was peculiar (“like she was paranoid or something”). It turned out she had taken some acid an hour before his arrival. When she complimented him, saying his feathers looked pretty, he realised it was time to leave.

Beyond our Ken

A FURTHER sign that you’re getting old, courtesy of writer and storyteller Chik J Duncan: When you have an item for the Diary but it keeps slipping your mind until Ken Smith has moved on to another topic.

Pointing the finger

A READER alerts us to a weekend newspaper profile of union boss Tosh McDonald, president of Aslef, pictured above, who, it is reported, “has his name tattooed on his knuckles”. Really? asks the reader. Exactly how many fingers does the bloke have?

Festive miseries

FROM Ontario, Andrew Foster emails: “I was afraid we’d make it to Christmas this year without adding to The Herald’s cheerful treasury of festive headlines, such as: l Festive mail chaos.

l Festive engineering works.

l Festive road casualties.

l Festive strike action.

l Festive lorry-driver shortage.

l Festive grocery spending and l Festive advertising battle.”

Saturday’s Herald, however, he notes, has made good with “festive misery for travellers”. No problem, Andrew. Happy to help.

All in the title

AND still the entries flood in for the Diary’s latest competition, in which film titles are surgically deprived of a single letter to make them more interesting.

Today’s batch: l Leave Her To Heave: A girls’ night out in Glasgow (Russell Smith).

l Seven Ears In Tibet: Bizarre, Snow White spin-off, where her wee men friends each lose a lug in the Himalayan snows (Bill Matthews).

l Inglourious Basters: a team of chefs underdo the festive turkeys.

l A Clockwork Range: Granny’s wind-up cooker.

l The Gus of Navarone: War epic with Gaelic subtitles (all John Samson).

l The Longest Da: A wee boy boldly tells his pal: “My father’s taller than your father” (Simon Paterson).

l Brie Of Frankenstein: Dr F turns his hand to a less challenging project (David Hamilton).

l Lady And The Tram: a Morningside matron’s attempt to get the line extended to her doorstep (Nan Spowart).

The prize is a champagne dinner for two donated by the Urban Bar & Brasserie in St Vincent Place, Glasgow. More mutilated film titles tomorrow.