CONGRATULATIONS to the fiery young Airdrie writer Len Pennie, who has been named Poet Laureate for the St Andrew’s Society of Los Angeles.

The Diary didn’t even realise there was a Scots population in LA that was sizable enough to have its own St Andrew’s Society. Then we recalled that famous Celtic resident of Hollywood, and star of such movies as One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest and The Shining.

How could we have forgotten Jock Nicholson?

More Lingua Latina

OUR scholarly correspondents continue to recall their encounters with that most elegant means of classical communication, the Latin language.

When Julie McAlpine attended Notre Dame High School, in Dumbarton, in the mid-1960s, her Latin teacher was a Miss Lorkin, known affectionately as Lorky, who was immortalised in the following ‘Latin’ ditty:

Lorkibus satisbus on the deskalorum

Deskibus collapsibus

Lorky’s on the florum.

Fishy remark

TWITTER is a forum famous for its reasoned debates and precise, factual comments. For example, Sarah Vine, the wife of Cabinet minister Michael Gove, boasts on the social media site that she enjoys visiting Glasgow, especially its wonderful “Ubiquitous Fish” restaurant.

The Diary is eager to know if she has also strolled down the city’s Squelchyhill Steet, or visited its Mitchell Brothers Library (Famous for holding the world’s most extensive collection of EastEnders memorabilia).

The name game

Nifty nicknames continued. A friend of Brian Crook, from Bearsden, who studied at Glasgow University, told him there was a lavatory attendant at the student union with a particularly bad posture who was christened Quasicommodo.

Bog standard

WE are devising advertising jingles, based on famous songs, to support local businesses and kickstart the economy once lockdown ends. Last week a reader suggested a tune from the musical South Pacific should be adapted to promote fishmongers (The song would now be referred to as Salmon Chanted Evening).

Reader Harry Shaw points out the same ditty could publicise the local plumber.

The lyrics now becoming: Someone’s chanty’s leakin.

Belly laugh

THE word "yuck" is used as an expression of profound disgust, though in America it also means to laugh heartily at something.

Reader Hugh Peebles manages to combine the two by informing us of the humorously horrid conclusion he arrived at after suffering from an upset stomach.

“Diarrhoea is hereditary,” he sighs. “It runs in the jeans.”