Flummoxed by film

WHEN Gordon McRae’s seven-year-old grandson came for a visit he started rummaging around Gordon’s DVD collection. When the little chap’s mum asked what he was looking for, he said: “The Everlasting Book.”

After another search, she asked if perhaps he meant that classic 80s kiddy flick… The Neverending Story.

He did.

(Though, quite frankly, the Diary would love to sit down with a hotdog and bucket of popcorn to watch The Everlasting Book… that’s got blockbuster written all over it.)

Men on manoeuvres

WE are told by a reader that a former director of a House of Fraser store had the habit of rearranging the layout of the departments.

One employee, when asked by a customer where the Men’s department was, is reported to have answered: “I don’t know, madam. But if you just wait at the escalator, you’ll see its going past.”

Fresh… not frisky

FOLLOWING on from a heated Diary discussion about why there is no Straight Wurly, only the curly kind, Bill Lindsay gets in touch to inform us of a writing exercise he gave to his Higher English class, over thirty years ago. The lesson was titled, Supermarket Semantics…

Fresh beef.

Fresh poultry.

Fresh fish.

Just how fresh is dead?

Bonkers about books

THOUGHT for the day from Stan Crowcroft: “Reading is just staring at a dead piece of wood for hours and hallucinating.”

Fantasy friction

WE recently mentioned that Glasgow crime scribe Douglas Skelton is thinking about composing a story about a grubby detective who visits Middle Earth. The tale would be called Gollumbo.

Inspired by this concept, Gordon Campbell from Crieff is contemplating another mash-up between the world of fantasy and crime.

He says: “If the late, great Mark McManus's Taggart had turned up in Middle Earth, would he have been able to sneak in the line, 'There's been a Mordor'?”

Going for gold

ENCOURAGING news. Researchers have found evidence that scoffing cheese and cream may ward off heart disease.

Jim Borland from Largs is delighted with this counterintuitive revelation, and says: “I’m now looking forward to researchers discovering that the best way to train for an Olympic gold is sitting on a couch scoffing a family-sized bag of Spicy Doritos. Hand me my medal now.”

Hard to swallow

FEARFUL footy fan John Mulholland is concerned about our nation’s nebulous chance of grabbing glory: “If Scotland fail to qualify for the football World Cup finals in 2022, I will never again mention Qatar… it’ll stick in my throat.”