December stinks

OUR readers are still feeling slack-jawed and sluggish after all that turkey, stuffing, Brussels sprouts and plum pudding they’ve been forced to endure. Each of those delicacies has been on a continuous mealtime loop since December 25, reappearing with the painful yet inevitable regularity of a Mrs Brown Christmas special.

On a more positive and healthy note, Brian Wadham from Erskine says: “The current high energy costs mean people are washing less, to save money. The smell will make people avoid each other, and this will reduce the spread of Covid and flu.”

Sour sweet

MORE festive fuming. “What sweets would grumpy sheep be eating, this time of year?” asks Rab Neilson.

The answer is, of course… “Baa humbugs.”

(Never mind, Rab. The hideous aftermath of Christmas will soon be a thing of the past, and then we can settle down in comfort to enjoy the hideous aftermath of Hogmanay.)

Posterior pontifications

THE normally highfalutin Diary has become embarrassingly Rabelaisian of late, with our readers bombarding us with crude and rude anecdotes about the buttock region. (By buttock region, we, of course, mean a person’s bottom, not the Buttock Region of Southern France, an arable part of that country, where the many hills are round and undulating, and the smell of fresh manure overpowers even the hardiest native.)

Anyway… Russell Smith from Largs further lowers the tone of our esteemed column by getting in touch to say: “I knew a man who was so proud of his big backside that he claimed it had its own postcode.”

Royal reversal

ANOTHER of our readers who was less than delighted with the modern version of Christmas that has usurped the more traditional Yuletide is Ian Noble from Carstairs Village, who gets in touch to growl: “I see the Queen’s speech was given by a man this year. Political correctness gone mad.”

Premature pledge

CONSCIENTIOUS reader Melissa Holton pinged us a message on Tuesday the 27th of December (yesterday) to say: “My New Year’s resolution is to stop doing things six days early.”


Read more from the Diary: Be grateful for this seat of learning


Bucking the trend

ON a bus trundling through the East End of Glasgow the other day, Mickey Loughran overheard a young fellow say to his pal: “A pure love this time o’ year. Even the Buckie tastes better. Santa must turn it intae Champagne when it’s still in the bottle.”

The daily grind

DISAPPOINTED Janice Walton got a Womble-shaped pepper grinder as a Christmas gift. “Now everything’s either underground or overground,” she sighs.