The fear factor
IN a few days it’s Halloween, but will anybody in the country notice? For Scotland has been a horror show for a very long time.
Only kidding!
Scotia is a braw wee plot of land, if you don’t mind the withering weather, or relentless skirling of wild bagpipes as they gallop and gambol on the hills and mountains of the far north. (If you think that’s unendurable, it’s nothing compared to the screeching and yowls they make during the mating season.)
Halloween actually provides a pleasant distraction from the above.
It’s also the favourite day in the calendar for Diary staff. For it allows us to supplement our wages (which usually arrive in the form of a crumpled sliver of paper, with the letters IOU scrawled across it in purple crayon) with a spot of frenetic guising.
Okay, our scribes may not get paid the big bucks. But, as the Diary Editor often reminds us, who needs oodles of dosh when job satisfaction is enough to keep you warm during the chilly winter months?
And we certainly get large dollops of that. For working in Diary Towers allows us to publish some truly terrific tales, such as the following classic yarns from our archives…
Pithy perfection
AN eminent legal chap recalled being on a Glasgow bus in the 1950s when he heard a woman declare: “See ma man? See’s maw? See chips? Cannae staun’ them.”
The legal chap would forever afterwards advise young lawyers to think of that incident when framing written pleadings - all the facts are there and not a word wasted.
Quality quip
THE late folk singer and raconteur Danny Kyle once dealt with a heckler during a gig at Glasgow Uni with the classic put down: “Yer like a lighthouse in the desert: brilliant but useless.”
No cold comfort
IT’S tough being a legal eagle. A Glasgow lawyer was bemoaning the fact that the downturn in the housing market had affected the once-lucrative conveyancing business. Now much of his turnover was coming from dealing with wills and estates.
“Mind you,” he added, “this mild winter hasn’t helped much either.”
Rail-ly sneaky guy
NIFTY nicknames, Part 1: A reader said that in the Paisley factory where he worked there was a supervisor who was known as Subway – due to the fact he came round every 10 minutes to check that everyone was working.
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Cop that
NIFTY nicknames, Part 2: There used to be a police superintendent who was known by colleagues as Semmit because he was never off his underlings' backs.
Gruesome gag
A READER once told us a deliciously daft joke. “What do you call a man with a car on his head? Jack.”
(Ooft.)
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