Water palaver

IN a cunning attempt to boost the Diary readership we are publishing a series of dolphin-related stories which will hopefully entice the highly intelligent, water-based mammals into perusing this page.

So far we haven’t had much success, as we discovered after hiring a polling organisation, whose findings showed that dolphins prefer to skim the sports pages of a newspaper, especially when there’s an article about a Miami-based American football team.

Nevertheless, we persevere, and have even widened our net to write about other ocean-paddling beasties.

Malcolm Boyd from Milngavie says: “While sailing in the Merchant Navy down the Great Barrier Reef, I looked over the side of the ship to see a great white shark lurking in the corals. I have never swum in the open sea since that day, and I certainly wouldn’t trust swimming with dolphins, as they look very shark-like.”

(Malcolm is wrong, of course, for dolphins and sharks are not at all similar. You’d never catch a shark reading the sports pages of a national newspaper, for instance. They prefer the arts section, especially if there’s a meaty article about a classic Spielberg flick.)

 

Blowy bloke

A PHOTO we published reminds reader Barrie Crawford of a colleague whose husband worked in Germany. This bloke once attended a meeting where the initial pleasantries were under way, and one fellow was introduced as Herr Dreier.

“As far as I know,” says Barrie, “he wasn’t a relative of Sir Alex Ferguson.”

 

Mangle-ing words

A DIARY tale of an elderly lady confusing the words auburn and aubergine reminds Janice Taylor from Carluke of her mother, who is close to her 96th birthday, and has a habit of substituting famous people’s names with a colourful approximation.

Her tally so far includes… Benedict Buttercup (for Cumberbatch); Miriam Gargoyle (for Margolyes); and Meagle Mangle (for Meghan Markle).

 

Dogging it

WE continue awarding famous folk Fido-friendly monikers. Malcolm Traquair recalls the legendary pop composer… Burt Barkarach.

 

Losing it

THE 18-year-old son of reader Tom Fenn has, at various times, lost his debit card, his library card and his Young Scot card, so Tom suggested he purchase a wallet.

The teenager heartily concurred. 

“That’s a great idea,” he said. “Instead of losing my cards, one at a time, I can lose them all at once.”

 

Hot suggestion

AS autumn guides us into its icy embrace, reader Craig Paxton has a suggestion.

“If you’re cold, stand in the corner of your living room,” he says. “It’s always 90 degrees, there.”