Doubling up
A COCKY work colleague of reader Anne Crawford was often overheard mumbling to himself.
With a nonchalant shrug, he explained his peculiar behaviour: “Of course I talk to myself,” he said. “It comes in handy when I need expert advice.”
Roll with it
ChatGPT is an internet programme that can compose poetry, so the Diary is asking it to write updated versions of classic verse.
Today we’ve requested John Keats’s Ode on a Grecian Urn, glammed-up in the style of Scottish 1970s boyband the Bay City Rollers…
Hey there, Grecian Urn, you’re lookin’ fine,
With your ancient scenes frozen in time.
Your curves and shapes, they really groove,
You’ve got that classic style, you’ve got that move.
Your painted figures, they dance and play,
Forever young, never fade away.
Eternal beauty, captured in clay,
You’re the ultimate icon of yesterday.
Hey there, Urn, you’re a real sensation,
Bringing joy and awe to every generation.
You’ve got us dreaming of a distant age,
Where love and art were all the rage.
So here’s to you, Grecian Urn, so grand,
In our hearts, you’ll forever stand.
You may be old, but you’re still rockin’ strong,
A timeless symbol of where we belong.
Bookish meets peckish
OUR cultured readers are equal parts bibliophile and bon vivant.
David Donaldson suggests combining these passions by making books edible.
For starters, he suggests… Little Dorito.
Hot and bothered
WE’RE celebrating the joys of aeroplane jaunts.
Bill Brown from Dumfries took a business flight which landed on the Isle of Barra’s cockleshell beach.
He was a tad trepidatious when, just before take-off, the pilot announced: “Don't worry if you smell burning. We've just had a new heater installed.”
The sharp end
A TRAGIC thought from reader Donald Cunningham: “In margarine-buying households, butter knives never fulfil their true purpose.”
Film fun, continued
RED carpets are draped across Sauchiehall Street’s phlegm-speckled pavements, and the Glasgow Kiss has been upgraded to an Air Kiss.
Which can only mean one thing. Glasgow Film Festival has sashayed into town.
To celebrate this momentous movie-making Mardi Gras, we’re imagining Scottish versions of famous Hollywood movies.
Comedy legend Andy Cameron suggests that if Alfred Hitchcock had been raised in Glasgow he’d have made a flick called North by North-Auchenshuggle.
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