Money, money, money

NIGEL Farage’s ongoing dispute with Coutts has led the Diary to consider with pride its own banking strategy. We encourage all Diary employees to store their wages in a giant porcelain piggy bank – three times the size of a flesh and blood porker – which is stored in the Diary Editor’s office.

When the pig is jampacked with bright, shiny pennies, the Editor personally escorts them to Las Vegas, where he wisely invests in slot machines, which work on much the same principle as the London Stock Exchange.

Diary staff are not encouraged to inquire about any profits that may accrue, for such curiosity is considered rude in financial circles.

Clearly the Diary’s upper management are astute business folk. The cream of the capitalist crop.

Even so, our organisation’s true passion remains storytelling. Cash may be King, but a nifty narrative is Emperor.

The following classic yarns from our archives prove why the greatest trade will always be in tip-top tales…

 

Darkness visible

A READER just back from Majorca told us that he felt rather sorry for the father who said to his toddler son: “See that dark area in the water slowly moving? It’s a lot of fish swimming together.”

As the two of them stood there watching it, the little lad excitedly shouted: “They’re on the sand!”

His dad quietly answered: “Or it could be a cloud.”

 

Jumpy jurist

GLASGOW Sheriff Court, as is well known, is one of the busiest courts in Europe. A Newlands reader who once arrived for jury duty wondered how fair the jury was going to be when one of his fellow jurists confided: “When the letter arrived with the court address on the envelope, I thought it was a summons.”

 

Growing pains

WISE words were overheard by a Diary reader in a Clarkston coffee shop, where a woman was telling her pal that she was worried that her young son seemed a bit on the short side for his age.

“Buy him an expensive new blazer,” her pal recommended, presumably from grim experience, “and watch him shoot up.”

 

Catty comment

AN American couple in Glasgow city centre were looking at a poster advertising sightseeing excursions by the company Mercat Tours.

“Arnold,” said the lady to her partner, “do you want to come and see the meerkats?”

 

The name game

A READER recalled the St Patrick’s High School teacher in Dumbarton whose surname was McCollum, a less common spelling of McCallum, which is often found in Ireland.

The pupils immediately nicknamed him "Widgy".

 

Animal antics

A SHIPYARD tale. A foreman checking the work of a pipefitter was heard to comment: “Cry yersel a fitter, son? Ye couldny fit a nut in a monkey’s mooth.”