Tarnished Platinum
WE recently mentioned that someone in Edinburgh was caught referring to the Platinum Jubilee by the jaunty sobriquet of the platty jubes.
We now discover that this is fast becoming a trend in these lands, though not everybody is delighted about this unexpected development in the Scots language.
Inverness-based playwright Jack MacGregor grumbles: “Platty jubes sounds like a 19th century euphemism for dysentery.”
Norse code
MORE blue blood badinage. Though on this occasion the person with the unusually-tinted haemoglobin isn’t our own Queen. (Gor bless y’, ma’am.) It’s some chap from up Scandinavia way…
“When I was at primary school,” recalls Glasgow actress Janette Foggo, “King Olav of Norway came to visit Weir's works, round the corner, and we were turned out onto the pavement to wave as he drove past. I laughed because my mum's name was Olive and I thought the King of Norway had a girl's name.”
Food for thought
OUR readers are sophisticated gourmets who delight in exotic cuisine, which is why many of them will be jealous of the pupils at Welsh primary schools who are to be fed insects such as crickets, grasshoppers, silkworms and locusts as part of a project to gauge children’s appetite for "alternative protein".
Diary correspondent Ralph Walton shows more concern than jealousy when he says: “If this sort of experiment is ever attempted in Scotland, I hope they’ll have the decency to deep-fry the insects first.”
Violent veg
MUSING on munchables, reader Barry McLean says: “Anybody who claims onions are the only vegetables that make you cry has obviously never been poked in the eye by a carrot.”
Future imperfect
AUTHOR LP Hartley wrote: “The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there.” Though if Boris Johnson has a say in the matter we’ll all soon be awarded passports allowing us to visit that exotic destination. For BoJo is desperate to bring back imperial measurements such as pounds and ounces.
This delights reader Jennifer Simpson, who trills: “Oh, goody! Can we look forward to a brave new world of Brut aftershave, outside cludgies and trying to figure out who shot JR…”
I Palindrome I
AN ambitious reader recently informed us he’s launching a band called The Palindromes, whose first song will be titled If I Had a HiFi.
Niall Young from Montrose suggests a better title would be the slightly surreal If I Was a Wi-Fi.
Boozy birdies
A LITTLE-KNOWN fact from reader Dan Harris: “Before the crowbar was invented, crows simply drank at home.”
Read more: When Scotland's Booker winner was lost in translation
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