Mew.. who?

YOUR average novelist has many enemies. There’s the general public, for a start, who all too often refuse to bow down or swoon when confronted with a writer’s dazzling genius. Bookshops, too, can be problematic. They’ve been known to stock works by – yeuch – rival scribblers

Perhaps the deadliest foe an author faces is their own editor.

Inverness-based crime scribe Shona MacLean, who publishes as SG MacLean, once had a copy ditor who attempted to replace the word "cawing" with "mewing" in reference to an Aberdonian seagull.

“I explained that your average Aberdonian seagull is approximately the size of a small bus,” says MacLean, “and it does not mew.”

Flower power

GAZING admiringly at the wondrous vista that is his garden, reader Gordon McRae’s eyes alighted upon a swathe of buttercups, which reminded him of his gran, who said you could tell if someone liked butter by holding a buttercup under their chin.

“It caused me to wonder if this applies to vegans,” says Gordon, “or would they just claim a false positive?”

Chit-chat chap

A FORMER colleague of Stevie Campbell from Hamilton was fond of the sound of his own voice. Being a generous chap, he also liked sharing his dulcet tones with anybody in earshot.

One day, after he’d delivered a particularly meandering monologue, a fellow worker interrupted this Grand Vizier of Vainglorious Verbiage.

"Sir,” said he, “you are the type of person who runs out of useful things to say an hour before you stop talking."

His number’s up

WITH exam results arriving just in time to ruin teenagers’ summer holidays, reader Ralph McBride asked his son how he thought he’d done in his subjects.

“Brilliant!” beamed the boastful boy, making his parent swell with pride.

Though dad’s delight dissolved rapidly when his son added: “I’m 110 percent certain I got an A in maths.”

Floating voter

VISITING his local pub, reader Glenn Lawes overheard a woman at the next table telling her gal pal that she adored the pop star Beyonce.

Shrugging her shoulders, the gal pal said, "Whatever floats your boat."

"No,” replied the first woman, “that's buoyancy."

Stalled story

BLOWING the dust off the keys on her laptop, reader Karen Logan has decided to write down all the things she ought to do, but seldom gets round to even starting.

“It’s my oughtobiography,” she says.

Back to black

A TOP tip from reader Bill Cassidy: “Always keep an empty milk carton in the fridge, just in case someone pops in and asks for a black coffee.”