Delayed gratification
NICOLA STURGEON has proved she’s the sort of daring politician who isn’t afraid of confronting pressing injustices, by apologising to the poor women (and occasional chap) punished for being witches in Scotland between the 16th and 18th centuries.
The Diary is sure the victims would be very grateful for this timely interjection, if it wasn’t for the small matter of them being dead for a few hundred years.
Reader Martha Dougherty says: “I’m now eagerly looking forward to the First Minister bravely confronting the problem of toxic masculinity in the court of Robert the Bruce.”
The young team
WE mentioned Brandon Lee, the 30-year-old bloke who returned to his former school, Bearsden Academy, pretending to be a teenage pupil. Bill Lindsay taught there at the time, and recalls the fall-out.
Staff members regularly played outdoor five-a-side football, with players ranging from men in their twenties to early sixties. The scholarly athletes once jogged on to the playing field during the peak time of the media frenzy.
Big mistake. They immediately became the focus of a gaggle of press photographers.
A colleague of Bill’s turned to him and said: “I can just see tomorrow’s headlines: 'Bearsden Academy’s Under 15s turn out for football practice'.”
Bum note
A DIARY tale about classical music reminds Russell Smith from Largs of the chap who tried to prove how cultured and refined he was by claiming that he enjoyed Rimsky-Korsakov’s Bum of the Flighty Bee.
The moral maze
“THE West is banning oil from Russia because it's a despotic regime with terrible human rights,” points out Scottish comedian Leo Kearse, who adds that it will instead get its black gold from “Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and that woman who put the cat in the bin”.
Animal magic
ENJOYING a stroll round the pond in Glasgow’s Queen’s Park, reader Henry Summers spotted a young mother with her toddler son.
“Look!” trilled the thrilled child, pointing. “Over there! It’s a mongoose.”
“No, dear,” replied mother. “That’s not a mongoose. It’s a swan.”
Then, after a meaningful pause, she added: “I really should take you away from that nursery. Their teaching methods are radical, to say the least.”
Circular spying
CURIOUS reader Cliff Hathaway says: “I’ve always wanted to find out what would happen if I hired two private investigators to follow each other.”
Food for thought
WITH McDonald’s closing its Russian fast food restaurants in protest at the invasion of Ukraine, reader Paul Burns says: “Does this mean the West has now imposed a no-fries zone?”
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