The Diary

Being used to such requests when he used to walk the streets of Hamilton and Blantyre, George duly obliged. The photie taken, the girl was set to roller-skate off. ''Do you know who I am?'' George asked. ''Yes,'' she said as she departed, ''Al Gore.''

NOTICE in an Irish supermarket: ''Buy one, pay for two, and get the third one free.''

THE scene is the entrance to Linlithgow Sheriff Court. Joe Beltrami is enjoying a spot of fresh air before commencing his duties in defence of poor, downtrodden accused. As ever, he is sporting the immaculate uniform of the solicitor-advocate, the black jacket, pin-stripe breeks, white shirt, and grey silk tie. He is coiffed to perfection. He is approached by a member of the public who asks where he might find his lawyer and in which court his case is to be heard. ''Pray tell, my good man, why do you make these inquiries of me,'' says Joe in his lofty tones. ''So, you're not the doorman?'' the man replies.

ANOTHER Scottish website. This time a domain specialising in typical West of Scotland greetings: whothef**krulookin@.com.

SPRING has sprung, the grass has rizz . . . and bowlers are coming out of hibernation. One of the rituals of this curious breed is the throwing of the first jack of

the season. The jack is the wee white bool they aim at.

This task is performed by the club president's wife. We hear of one bowls widow who had little time for the pursuit upon which her husband lavished so much time, love, and money. She avoided the bowls club as a rule but found herself, in her capacity as president's wife, standing on the green. A jack was placed in her hand.

''What do I do with this?'' she hissed to her spouse. ''Jist throw the bliddy thing,'' he replied. She did. She hurled it mightily into the air, sending the gathering of blazered and be-medalled boolers scurrying for cover.

KIDS with mobile phones, thanks to over-indulgent parents, are getting younger and younger - some even attending primary school. One little boy out playing phoned his mother in tears on his mobile to say there had been a slight accident, and that he

had wet himself. Telling him to calm down, his mother asked him: ''Where are you ringing from?'' And back down the phone he sobbed: ''Frae the waist doon.''

WE hear of the young chap doing a bit of supermarket shopping in Glasgow's East End. The old woman in front of him in the check-out queue kept on staring at him, which disturbed him somewhat. Eventually she said to him: ''Sorry to stare, but you look so much like my own son.

''It's terrible, he died so suddenly just a few months ago.''

The chap expressed his sympathy, and she asked him: ''I never did get to say goodbye to him. It would help me so much if you said, 'Goodbye, mother' when I leave the shop.'' A bizarre request, but she seemed upset, so he agreed. It was only when he paid for his messages and the bill came to double what it should have been that the assistant said: ''But your mother said you were paying for both.''

THE Edinburgh religious scene has been much amused about our tale of Scotland on Sunday erroneously referring to Roman Catholic Cardinal Gray as a gay lover of Oscar Wilde.

They point out that Rosemary Goring, who edited that section of the paper, is leaving to become editor of the Church of Scotland magazine Life and Work. ''Perhaps her last act was to give the papes a right good kicking before she left,'' wondered one Kirk elder. Nothing of the sort, of course, as Rosemary is a fine upstanding journalist, etc.

IT IS often the case that the painful process of attending a friend's funeral produces a moment that lifts the spirits. Pepys the Elder was among many in St Alphonsus Church yesterday to see off James ''Jimsie'' McGuire.

Jimsie was a Calton man of regular habits. The horses, the dugs, Celtic, and the patter. But not the drink which he had forsaken later in life.

The tributes to Jimsie were led by a young American, his grandson, Gerald McLean. He told of Calton Jimsie's other life as a ''California dude''.

When visiting his family in Morgan Hills, Jimsie took kindly to the California life. He became the oldest swimming pool boy in town. He dined in most of the cosmopolitan restaurants, from Mexican to Vietnamese, and, being a Calton man, had a steak (well done) in each.

He taught his Californian grandsons and their pals rhyming slang. Which is why puzzled parents would be confronted with such as ''I'm going up the apples and pears to change my winners and losers'' or, at the dinner table, ''Please pass the Joe Loss''.

Jimsie, being a Californian Caltonian, was on e-mail. He wanted as his e-mail address SanToi, a reference to the tribal allegiances of his youth.

He was surprised to discover that he had to register as SanToi25@hotmail.com - a sign that 24 other adherents of the East End grouping were already on the internet. Oh, and what was his password? Toiyabass, naturally.

n The Diary can be contacted on e-mail at thediary@theherald.co.uk