Groan up
PROFESSIONAL topers among you – looking at you, madam – will know that this is Negroni Week. Negroni is said to be the cocktail of this decade, the drink, writes Richard Godwin in the Go London Newsletter, “that seems to capture, in its aromatic majesty, something of the spirit of the age”. Mind you, it had its admirers in the previous century too. Kingsley Amis wrote: “It has the power, rare with drinks and indeed with anything else, of cheering you up.” Don’t overdo it, though, or you’ll get a hangover. Or Negroanie.
Bus stop
EXHIBITING the kind of nobility that we have come to expect from Diary readers, Peter Sommerville, in Greenock, declares a desire to take the heat off Kilwinning when it comes to matters conjugal. “So,” he writes, “on the subject of contraception, what does a girl from Port Glasgow use for protection? A bus shelter.”
Respecting Ross
DISGRACEFULLY, the appointment of Ross Thomson as Boris Johnson’s campaign manager in Scotland has been greeted with torrents of personal abuse. As a Diary of record, we are forced – with a heavy heart – to reproduce some of this, including the observation that the famously cheesing Aberdeen South MP “looks as though he goes to bed with a coat-hanger in his mooth” and that he “looks like Ramsay Bolton, that nutbag frae Game of Thrones”. This is shocking and we trust that Diary readers will refrain from sending us further examples.
Fowl play
FOLLOWING alarm expressed by a top columnist (chorus: “Fair to middling!”; all right, fair to, well, average) in the Herald on Sunday about bee-eating hornets on Jersey, one “Kernel Sanders” writes in to remind us that the top (chorus: “Fair to …”; all right, fair to middling) Channel Island has also been suffering from a plague of feral chickens.
In a scenario that puts the cock in “Hitchcockian”, a 100-strong gang of the beasts has been terrorising the locals, waking them up and wreaking havoc in their gairdins. There are no foxes on the island, and two small culls seem to have had little effect. In a situation described as “clucking ridiculous”, the fowl creatures have even been chasing joggers. Culled? They should be given medals.
DI why?
TOP reader David Young enjoyed fellow Largs man Bob Mackie's anecdote in the Diary about local character, painter and decorator, J McCaig, who was famously sceptical of DIY. David, who was best man at Bob's wedding, recalls another famous logo which appeared on the side of the esteemed painter's van: “Do it yourself – then send for McCaig.”
Get a ruminant
AFTER a bruising week following her controversial chairing of the Tory leadership debate, Newsnight presenter Emily Maitlis posted pictures on Twitter showing her engaged in something called “goat yoga”. Surprisingly, this fad started in the US and, just as surprisingly, involves doing yoga in the midst of domesticated ruminants. We can only think that Emily is preparing for the possibility of presenting Have I Goat News for You.
Old make
TODAY’S piece of daftness comes from Martin Morrison, in Lochinver, who sends us one of his “old jokes recycled for the 21st century”, to wit:
"My wife's gone to the West Indies."
"Jamaica?"
"No. The Home Office did."
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