Tour too far
STAND-UP comic Ray Bradshaw reveals that an odd aspect of lockdown has been his phone calendar notifying him each day where he should have been gigging.
“I've felt sad to miss out on trips to New Zealand, Kilkenny and many other places,” he says. “Today it's reminded me I should be going to Fife, so it's not all bad.”
Hot bother
A SEAFARING friend of Hugh Scott Smith from Duddingston used to regularly bring home to Glasgow frozen curries from a restaurant in downtown Abu Dhabi. The spicy feasts were enjoyed by family and friends. On one occasion the bag containing the contraband curry went missing at Heathrow. It took many frantic phone calls before it was located and redirected to Glasgow, much to the relief of the curry connoisseurs waiting its arrival.
“It was never clear if the panic was due to the curry being undeclared,” says Hugh. “Or in anticipation of how bad the bag would smell had the delay in delivery been long enough for the contents to have thawed and decayed.”
Boyfriend’s buzzing
READER Grant Jones has started dating a woman who likes bees. “I think she’s a keeper,” says Grant.
Book nook
WE’RE devising Scottish alternatives for the word bookworm. Eric Arbuckle from Largs suggests Page Turner, though we’re not sure that’s Celtic enough. Perhaps MacPage Turner would do the trick…
Food for thought
IN the days when Amy Kinnaird from Ochiltree taught infants, a girl called Henrietta once raced into class after break. The little lass was eager to clipe on an unfortunate fellow pupil.
“John picked up a sweetie in the playground and ate it,” announced the eager informant. “I told him not to do that. Maybe a dug's peed on it.”
Henrietta was clearly unaware this only adds to the flavour, as any playground gourmet would have told her.
Salad days
“MY wife has changed a lot since becoming a vegetarian,” says Alasdair Brook. “It’s like I’ve never seen herbivore…”
Web of deceit
AUTHOR Deedee Cuddihy received a spam email from a concerned individual called Kerri who had been checking out Deedee’s Funny Scottish Books website.
"You've misspelled the word 'Soor’ on your website,” explained kind and considerate Kerri. “I thought you would like to know. Silly mistakes can ruin your site's credibility. Contact me for info about a spelling tool that I use."
It seems Kerri was unaware of soor plooms, which feature on the website in Deedee's book Scottish Sweetie Addicts and Chocoholics.
Independent thinking
A PHILOSOPHICAL thought from reader Mitch Greeves. “We have to believe in free will,” says Mitch. “We really don’t have a choice.”
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 hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel