THE Diary has been recalling the chaos that ensued when decimalisation was introduced 50 years ago.

Comedian Andy Cameron tells us that his granny, Bella, got her provisions from Boabby’s Biscuit Bus.

One night in the pub, Boabby told Andy he had visited Bella’s street and she came on the bus for a few bits and pieces.

“Boabby,” said Bella, who was in her 80s at the time. ”Gie’s a quarter o’ tomatoes, a hauf pun o’ cheese and a hauf pun o’ butter.”

Boabby informed her that because the UK was now in the decimal age it was all kilos. “Well, gie's a quarter pun o’ kilos an aw,” said Bella.

Toothy tune

WE have been shining a light on the diabolical ditties that were once sung by scampish Scottish school kids.

The wife of David Gemmell, from Lanark, would often belt out this little number, which was fiendishly adapted from an early toothpaste advert:

You’ll wonder where the yellow went,

When you brush your teeth with Pepsodent.

You’ll wonder where your tonsils go,

When you brush your teeth with Fairy Snow.

Gone bananas

MILLIONS of pounds worth of cocaine was seized by the National Crime Agency in Portsmouth after it was smuggled in a consignment of bananas.

Meanwhile, a zoo keeper chum of reader Stevie Campbell has been wondering if some of the cargo went astray.

It seems the monkeys are monkeying about more than usual at Edinburgh Zoo…

Shakespearian salesmanship

A DIARY story about camping reminds reader Gordon McRae of the apocryphal tale of tent-makers Black's of Greenock.

It was claimed that one of their January sales was run under the slogan: ‘Now is the winter of our discount tents.’

Feeling peaky

THE sister of reader Barrie Crawford is a doctor. She recalls that ladies who phoned the Breast Feeding Unit at a certain hospital would sometimes be put on hold. They were then treated to the tune These Are My Mountains while they waited to be connected.

Village people

WE continue providing alternative meanings for well-known locations. We’ve already had a definition for Killiecrankie, though Thorfinn Johnston, from Stromness, contributes another.

He suggests: Killiecrankie = The grumpiness of Kilmarnock FC fans at the recent performances of their team.

Nautical nickname

A TALE of life on the high seas. When Dave Poole, from Appin, in Argyll, was in the Merchant Navy he sailed with a Danish engineer named Hans Neesan, who could never understand why the British officers chose to call him Boomps-a-daisy.