Tattoo you

WE’RE discussing body art. Nowadays tattoos are popular with folk from every conceivable background, from the high flats to the highfalutin.

Perhaps even King Charles has a picture of a crown and sceptre etched on an upper arm. (Or maybe he has the doting message: "Chuck Luvs Cam". That would be terribly fetching, too.)

The other evening reader David Donaldson invited people round for drinks. One of the guests had worked as a nurse in A&E, and told the assorted revellers about the tattoos she had seen.

One roguish reprobate had tattooed himself all down his left leg with the convivial statement: “TO HELL WITH THE MARYHILL POLIS.”

(Though being a ne’er-do-well, he may have used a more robust phrase than "to hell with".)

Let’s be Frank

GARY Lineker has triumphed over his BBC overlords and appears to have become a figure of great cultural significance in the process.

From toe-poker goal scorer to this season’s Bertrand Russell, it won’t be long before Gary starts puffing on a calabash pipe while quoting choice aphorisms from Plato.

(In the original classical Greek, of course. Gary is too cosmopolitan a figure to be constrained by anything as parochial and commonplace as the English language.)

Reader Michael Davis hopes other retired ball-scuffers will also ascend to the intellectual stratosphere.

“Humza Yousaf, Kate Forbes and Ash Regan should stop debating each other immediately,” says Michael. “It’s time to announce Scotland’s next First Minister. The wise and the just… Frank McAvennie.”

I spy

A READER mentioned noticing a deer while driving to work. “Could this be classed as hindsight?” asks Robert Menzies.

Tummy trouble

ON social media historical novelist Lesley McDowell makes her thoughts known about Scotland’s favourite blockbuster movie, Braveheart.

She says: “My favourite bit is when he's being disembowelled at the end and just grimaces a wee bit like it's a touch of constipation.”

Snow joke

THE full blossom of spring should soon be upon us. Unfortunately winter is tenaciously outstaying its welcome, like a once-popular rock musician who insists on warbling all the old hits, even though he’s now third on the bill at Butlin’s.

Shivery slivers of ice dandruffing from the sky are particularly unpleasant, and Iain Mills from Largs spotted a local website which gave a yellow snow warning.

Says Iain: “Is this because locals find the snowy weather so scary they pee themselves?”

Underwater underwhelming

“I QUIT scuba diving after my first lesson,” says Susan Davis from Newton Mearns. “Deep down, I realized it wasn’t for me.”


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