Force of habit
THE Herald archive picture of the Scottish schoolchildren on the school cruise to Portugal and Spain on the SS Dunera reminds a reader: “We were on the trip from a girls’ school in Bothwell. When we got to Lisbon some boys started following us so the nuns from the school marched us straight back to the ship and we saw nothing of Lisbon.”
What’s in a name
OUR mention of nominative determinism - the suggestion that we are drawn to jobs that match our names - has reader John Mulholland recalling: “Years ago I had to endure one of those leaving speeches from the boss as I had been promoted and was transferring to another office. ‘Many of you will think that John’s surname originated from Ireland,’ he said. ‘However, you are wrong: it is Dutch. I did some research into the name and I found that it means hard-working, diligent and conscientious.
“As for his forename, remarkably, I found that it translates as ‘Isnae’.”
Full Marx
SIGNS you are growing old continued. Says a reader who volunteers at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Glasgow: “They put up a sign which states ‘Communities Defeat Terrorism’ in the main hall of the hospital. Myself and another elderly volunteer were discussing why they were making this distinction about Communists until it dawned on us that we might need stronger glasses.”
On a high note
TODAY’S piece of whimsy comes from Phil Swales who points out: “In opera, the show isn’t over until the fat lady sings.
“In karaoke, it’s just getting started.”
Watching your language
AND today’s award for being clever goes to the reader who emails: “I used to work in an upmarket restaurant when I was a student, but got sacked for putting a la carte before the hors d’oeuvres.”
Carton cavalcade
WE asked what you did at school but never since, and Amy Kinnaird in Ayrshire says: “When I was in primary school the tops of the wee third-of-a-pint milk cartons had small round rings with a hole in them for the straw. I used to take two home, and with odd scraps of wool, make pompoms out of them. These were sometimes hung from the hood of a baby’s pram to entertain the baby. Simpler days.”
Name that tune
A READER passes on the wise words from a fellow member of his golf club in Glasgow who declared: “You know that app Shazam on your phone that tells you the name of a piece of music if you point your phone at it? Wouldn’t it be great if there was an app so that you could point your phone at someone you were introduced to five minutes ago that reminds you what their name is?”
Career in reverse
WE bump into our old chum, folk singer Jim Wilkie, who tells us he has recorded a song, Donald My Son, about what advice Donald Trump’s old Scottish mum would have given him - basically to calm doon. Anyway Jim tells us he was almost signed up by CBS in New York in the seventies. The deal was never done, but CBS saw that his name was reversed on the audition tape as Wilkie James, and they told him that was a far better name to record under.
Bitter pill to swallow
JUST room to squeeze in a political thought. A reader in Falkirk phones: “I read the leaflet with my medicine which states ‘May cause depression, anxiety, panic attacks and suicidal thoughts’. And I thought to myself, should there not be an s on the end of cause?”
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