It’s a dog’s life
THE news pages report that the men involved in the annual hunt for
gugas – young gannets – have received threats that police are investigating. Eating the gugas is not to everyone’s taste. As a reader once told us: “A wizened islander said that once on Mingulay,while looking after sheep, he and his mates tried a guga, or ‘Barra duck’ as it’s known. ‘The guga wasn’t very nice, so we gave
it to the dog,’’ said the old man in his soft lilting brogue, ‘but he had to lick his backside to get the taste of it out
his mouth’.’’
Pot boiler
AND there is of course the classic recipe for cooking guga. It is: “Boil the guga for an hour in a pot with an old hobnailed boot. Remove from pot. Throw away the guga and consume the boot.”
Tales of the riverbank
OUR tale of piracy on the old Renfrew Ferry reminds Nigel Dewar Gibb: “The late, great cartoonist Bud Neil had a cartoon showing what was clearly the Renfrew Ferry with the ‘Captain’ resplendent in gold braided uniform bending down, pointing up river and saying to an amazed, open mouthed wee boy, ‘Yonder, to the North it lies, dark, brooding and mysterious – Yoker’.”
Chic nose it
AND The Herald archive picture of Chic Murray inevitably brings forth lines from the great man, with David Miller in Milngavie reminding us: “There was Chic’s story about the woman with the long nose. In telling it, he said: ‘I’ve nothing against long noses – they run in the family’.”
Point taken
FOOTBALL fans were getting excited yesterday about the transfer day deadline. It was harsh though of Dorset Police stating on social media: “Using your mobile for Deadline Day updates? You’ll have twice as many points as Arsenal if we catch you doing it at the wheel.”
Going Dutch
AND it might have been confirmed last night that Dutch player Virgil
van Djik is moving to Liverpool in one of the big transfers of the day. Daniel Walton in Manchester
tells us that a Liverpool fan he knows told his girlfriend that “Virgil van Dijk” is the Dutch for “I love you.” Not being a football fan, she took him at his word and ends every
text to him with “Virgil van
Dijk x” which seems to cheer
him up.
Room service
TRAINSPOTTING author Irvine Welsh, now living in America,
is not that enchanted with Donald Trump it seems. After Trump’s visit to the flooded Houston area, Irvine commented: “Terrific gesture to offer housing homeless Texan families in Trump chain of hotels. What, you didn’t make it? My mistake.”
He turned pink
TODAY is the start of Lamb Week
as producers try to get us to eat more lamb, particularly in Scotland where folk eat 25 per cent less than the British average. We recall a charity dinner at the Hilton raising money for the Maggie Centre when the harassed staff were trying to serve more than 500 hungry diners at once. At one table, a chap looked suspiciously at his lamb and told
the waitress that he had ordered it to be pink. She told him: ‘’See if you squeeze your beetroot over it,
it’ll turn pink,’’ and returned to her busy job.
Made her bed
WE stumbled into sleeper stories, and a reader was once booking a sleeper at Glasgow’s Central Station where she was told she would have to share the bunk-bedded berth with another traveller. “Male or female?” she asked.
“Oh, female,” the clerk replied, before adding: “But I can see you’re disappointed.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here