Bad language

THE Diary eagerly anticipates the Being Human festival in November, especially the Fun with Flyting workshop at Glasgow Uni, where participants learn the ancient and venerable Scots tradition of "flyting", ie hurling highly creative insults at all and sundry.

(The event also includes the art of crafting compliments, though we’re far less interested in that.)

Learning shiny new insults will certainly benefit the Diary Editor, who is sadly running out of invective to spray at his cowering minions. 

At the moment, the poor chap is making do with: “poltroon”, “nincompoop”, “base and craven cur”, and “Daily Record reader”.

Taking the heat

INTRANSIGENCE can be overcome by creative thinking and compromise.

Sometimes.

In his local Glasgow café, reader William Dean bought a Diet Coke and offered his loyalty card to get stamped.

“That’s only for hot drinks,” sniffed the waitress. “Cold drinks don’t count.”

Our ingenious and resourceful reader said: “If I place my hands on either side of the Coke glass, and warm it up a bit, can I get half a stamp for my card?”

The waitress submitted poor William to a stony-eyed glare, then spat out a definitive: “No.”

Clean getaway

GRUMPY reader Amy Field tells us: “I hate it when I’m up to date with the washing and ironing, and then I see my family walking around the house unashamedly wearing the clothes, and ruining all my hard work.”

Park life

IT was one of those wonderfully bright, yet bracingly chilly, autumnal days that almost make you forget that the summer has said sayonara for another year.

Reader Alice Woodburn was enjoying a leisurely stroll in Rouken Glen Park with her husband, who happens to be a chap with a memorable turn of phrase.

“Smashing day, isn’t it?” sighed Alice.

“Yes,” agreed hubby, “the weather’s so crisp it could be inside a Golden Wonder packet.”

Sign up and get the legendary Herald Diary to your inbox each morning.


The boor war

THE patriarchy has not yet been overthrown, points out reader Jenny Wilks, with a disgruntled sigh.

Visiting a wine bar with friends the other evening, she witnessed an exceedingly boorish chap gesticulating wildly and demanding to be served by the landlady, who was busy behind the bar with another customer.

“Are you the manager round here?” he slurred in a snarly tone.

“I’d rather you refer to me as the womanager,” she replied sharply. “Much more impressive, don’t you think?”

Possibly impossible?

INTRIGUED reader Ian Noble from Carstairs Village gets in touch to say: “Can you imagine living in a world without hypothetical situations?”