Fly guys
THE Diary was grieved to learn of the scandalous felling of the sycamore tree at Hadrian’s Wall.
It truly was a beautiful shrub. Far prettier than Ravenous Roger, the nine-foot-tall Venus Flytrap that lurks in a ceramic pot in the Diary Editor’s office.
Though perhaps the Hadrian’s Wall sycamore wasn’t quite as useful.
For our flytrap has proved an effective negotiating tool for encouraging recalcitrant Diary scribes, who blanch at working the 22-hour days set out in their contracts. (Which is outrageous! For we generously provide our staff with a full two hours of free time to enjoy sleep, a toilet break and a nutritious slab of lard from the Diary canteen.)
Scribes who demand improved contracts are given two choices.
- Continue as before.
- Enjoy promotion as a yummy snack for Ravenous Roger.
Most choose to continue with their literary labours, thus allowing us to publish a multitude of delightful stories, such as the following classic yarns from our archives…
Radio Ga Ga
BOUNCY, chirpy announcers on the wireless: you either hate ’em, or really, REALLY hate ’em.
A reader told us of a radio interview where the person being questioned was asked at the end, “Do you like 10cc?”, so the presenter could segue smoothly into the next piece of music.
“I’m more of a quarter-gill man myself,” was the classic reply.
Hard times
MONEY matters. During a previous painful recession a reader was leaving Glasgow’s Central Station and overheard a mendicant sitting on the pavement ask a smartly-dressed chap in a suit for “spare change”.
The suit-wearing fellow glanced at the coin-filled paper cup at the beggar’s feet, then replied: “You’re probably making more than me these days,” and kept on walking.
Housing crash
A MOVIE fan once told us: “Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz had amazing grandparents, yet you could still say she survived a broken home.”
Car-tastrophic changes
A PUZZLED Dunbartonshire reader argued that car insurance is getting a lot more complicated these days.
“You just used to choose the cheapest quote,” he explained, “but last night my wife asked if I would prefer to have a toy meerkat or 1000 Nectar points.”
Energy crises
A WHILE back there was sporadic panic-buying in some petrol stations, which inspired a reader to update a popular saying: “You can fuel some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time. But you can’t fuel all of the people all of the time.”
Mind your language
“WHAT word in the English lingo is always spelled wrong?” a reader once asked. The answer, of course, turned out to be… “Wrong.”
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