Family fun
HOW does a chap explain to curious dog walkers strolling past his house that there is an entirely reasonable explanation why a masked man, wearing a buxomly stuffed bra, is visible through his front room window?
Donald Munro – who lives in the house, and also happened to be the fellow in the mask (and bra) – tells the Diary that he was trying on a costume for his part in a live Zoom performance of Family, a trio of quirky monologues by Scottish playwright Gowan Calder.
The performance will be presented by dRC Productions this Saturday.
Donald remains blasé about the mask incident, and assures us he looked ravishing.
Fit for purpose?
WORKING in Uddingston the other day, reader Stevie Campbell overheard a conversation involving his colleague Barry, who was vehemently insisting that he wouldn’t return to his favourite gym until full normality resumes.
Or as he put it, he would be exercising his right not to exercise.
Dead wrong
THE joys of educating boys, continued. Languages teacher Barrie Crawford recalls one young scholar producing the following sentence in his German homework: “In der Schule studiere ich Englisch, Mathe und Friedhof.”
Teutonic linguists amongst our readers will have translated this as: “At school I study English, maths and graveyard.”
Barrie puzzled over this curious sentence for a while, then realised his pupil had wanted to write "chemistry". Unable to spell it in English, he had stumbled upon "cemetery" in his English/German dictionary, instead.
Politics, as normal
FOLLOWING Prince Philip’s death, political parties promised to temporarily stop campaigning out of a mark of respect. Leith-based comedian Jo Caulfield says: “They will continue their disrespectful behaviour next week.”
Bottle job
A WHILE ago Malcolm Boyd from Milngavie was strolling along the prom at Gourock when he noticed a bottle bobbing just offshore. By throwing stones he managed to guide it onto the beach where he eagerly unscrewed the lid and removed the slip of paper inside.
It read: “You have no new messages.”
Chocs away
THE daughter of Inverness novelist Shona MacLean (who writes as S.G. MacLean) brought mum a coffee at her desk, glanced in the wastepaper bin, and was appalled. And no wonder. For in that bin were Twirl wrappers. Milky Way wrappers. Mars Bar wrappers.
Shona stoutly defends her writerly routine by proudly pointing out that there was also a bit of orange peel in there.
Makes scents
“MY wife wondered if our kids were spoiled,” says reader Colin Murphy. “I told her most kids smell that way.”
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