Hippy, hippy fake
THE 15-year-old son of Bearsden reader Linda Davenport has been perusing a bunch of Jack Kerouac novels.
Furthermore, he hasn’t crossed the threshold of a barbershop in several months, meaning his hair is now longer than a prog rock drum solo.
It was painfully obvious that the lad was evolving into something irredeemably hideous.
And so it has transpired.
At the breakfast table on Saturday he proudly revealed to his mum and dad that he intends to pursue a beatnik lifestyle.
To achieve this lofty calling he demanded a beanbag sofa for his bedroom.
He further boasted that he plans on achieving transcendental enlightenment by his 16th birthday. (Five weeks from now.)
His father wasn’t especially impressed, and, without raising his head from his Saturday Herald, mumbled:
“Transcendental enlightenment, eh? Is that when you suddenly realise you need to visit the dentist?”
Inner truth
BACK in the 1970s reader Lynsey Crawford was in a Glasgow bar when she heard a couple arguing.
“You might be good-looking,” said the chap to his girlfriend, “but I know the real you. And you’re ugly on the inside.”
The girlfriend merely shrugged, then said: “Big deal. Everyone’s ugly on the inside. It’s where the guts and spleen are.”
Weird science
THE Diary’s Chemistry Correspondent David Donaldson gets in touch to ask: “What is the opposite of formaldehyde?”
The answer is, of course… Casualdejekyll.
Birdbrained mistake
ANOTHER of our tales from the chalkface. Retired Cumbernauld English teacher Rod Christopher recalls one of his bright young scholar who proudly claimed to have read the novel that was on the curriculum.
Yet somehow in a class test he still managed to give it the title To Mock a Killingbird.
Mollusc muddle
CONFUSED reader Hilary Riggs gets in touch with the Diary to confess: “I’ve never understood why an octopus has tentacles. Shouldn’t it have eightacles?”
Doubling down
AT the beginning of the year the ambitious wife of Diary correspondent Len Wright started a fiction writing course, and she has been dedicated to the authorial craft ever since.
The other day Len inquired how she was progressing.
After some consideration she replied: “Well, so far I’ve discovered that being a writer is two per cent creativity and 98 per cent trying not to use the same word twice in a sentence.”
Funny valentine
A ROMANTIC tale. “My wife dated a clown before she started going out with me,” reveals reader Patrick Ford, who adds: “I had some pretty big shoes to fill.”
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