Dubious duck tale

ISLAND hopping reader David Donaldson spent time on Mull recently, and tells us that after a two year hiatus the local Duck Race triumphantly returned this year, with a total of 117 ducks taking part.

David reports that the race was won by no. 25, who went by the name of 'A Very Tasty Dinner'.

Unfortunately our sporting correspondent also discovered that the competitors were all plastic ducks, manipulated by gleeful children prodding them along the water with sticks.

Plastic ducks in a competitive duck race?! The Diary is scandalised. Surely this is as bad as any sneaky steroid usage in the Olympic Games.

The people of Mull (and their dastardly duckies) should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves – it’s time to call fowl on fake waterfowl.

Tinned terror

A DIARY yarn about the confusing aspects of food and drink reminds Fraser Kelly in Manila of an issue which beset China.

The population of that country previously had low literacy levels, which led to cans and jars displaying photos or illustrations on their labels, to explain to people who couldn’t read what was in the containers.

The tradition continues to this day.

Which led to a certain amount of horror when Western baby food arrived in stores with smiling babies on the labels.

Fab fag gang

MADCAP malapropisms, continued. A colleague of Julie McAlpine was delighted when her husband resolved to give up cigarettes.

Though perhaps this woman should have been a tad trepidatious about the help her other half was getting in this endeavour.

For she enthusiastically informed Julie that her hubby had joined a “smoking sensation group”.

National pride

OUR correspondents continue lopping letters from movie titles in order to suggest better pictures that could have been filmed instead.

John Mulholland would love to watch a blockbuster about an ambitious Arabian country eager to turn itself into the swankiest nation in the region.

The movie would be called… Pretty Oman.

Problem solving exercise

WE’RE discussing the stationery holders that office workers keep on their desks. David Miller from Milngavie says a business colleague had three trays close at hand, labelled: ‘In’, ‘Out’, and ‘Too Difficult to Deal With’.

Weight and see

KILMARNOCK novelist David F. Ross visited the gym recently to discover if he could lift something heftier than a writerly biro. “Those 5kg weights are much heavier than they used to be,” gasps David. “$!*%ing inflation!”

Half-baked joke

GRUESOME gag time. “What’s yellow, smells of almonds and swings from cake to cake?” asks reader Bob Murphy. “Tarzipan.”