Mind your language
WE recently pointed out that bus and coach drivers aren’t just skilled at navigating twisty-turny roads while angrily parping their horns at lesser mortals in smaller vehicles. They’re also fabled for their mordant wit.
Reader Irene Munro recalls a piece of valuable information she was given at the start of a journey from Inverness to Glasgow.
The driver stated that there would be no smoking or drinking on the coach, and that the coach company had a special word for anyone discovered to be doing so.
“We call them,” he said, “pedestrians.”
A bedtime story
LEGALLY-MINDED Jock Williams from East Kilbride gets in touch to ask: “When lawyers go to sleep at night, do they take turns lying on both sides?”
Cup runneth over
THE Diary is celebrating the delightful aeroplane jaunts that have been enjoyed by our readers.
Proving that it really is the most glamorous way to travel, Janet Guthrie says: “Many years ago on an Aeroflot flight between Moscow and Odessa, our in-flight refreshment consisted of a brownish plastic cup of water. It had no handle and looked as if someone had soaked their false teeth in it.”
Cop out
CINEPHILES will be well aware that Glasgow Film Festival starts tomorrow.
This momentous movie news has encouraged our creative correspondents to rewrite famous quotations from the silver screen as though they had been delivered in Scotland.
Christine Brooks says: “In view of the local police stating that they may not be attending minor crimes, how about… ‘The force may be with you. (But don’t hold your breath)’.”
Window of opportunity
OUR readers are a wonderfully dynamic group of people.
None more so than Henry Link, who tells us: “When I was gazing out my living room window the other evening I saw two middle-aged people jogging, which certainly inspired me. Inspired me to close the curtains.”
Bean scene
INDUSTRIOUS reader Beatrice Roberts proudly informs the Diary that the other day she was doing some early spring cleaning.
Rummaging through one of the kitchen cupboards, she discovered, right at the back, an exceedingly dusty tin of Heinz beans that were over two years past the expiry date.
On hearing about this, her husband said: “Chuck ‘em in the bin. They’re has-beans.”
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Birdbrained badinage
GEOGRAPHICALLY minded reader Michael Hughes has been pondering the various nationalities of the world, and says: “If people from Portugal are called Portuguese, what should we call one solitary person from that country?”
The answer, of course, is… “Portugoose.”
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