Scent packing

THERE'S a story, possibly apocryphal, that Amazon's Frequently Bought Together search algorithm matches super-violent computer game Call Of Duty with adult nappies – implying that a considerable number of players are unable to tear themselves away from their screens long enough to answer the call of nature. Like I said, possibly apocryphal. But I really hope not.

What is true (though in this post-truth age I'll throw in another “possibly” here) is that Ivanka Trump, who has been described variously as “the First Daughter”, “the inflammable rayon glove on the iron fist” and a “mitigating agent for a sadistic, fascist regime” (I like the last one best), has apparently seen sales of her perfume soar since Dad became Prez. This despite Scarlett Johansson's merciless send-up of her and her perfume on the latest Saturday Night Live skit to take aim at the Trump administration and its various, er, personalities.

The perfume's certainly going great guns on Amazon, though once again those puckish algorithms have been up to their old tricks. Frequently bought with the Ivanka Trump For Women perfume, I note, are Red Lion Donald Trump Republican Crew Socks (85% nylon, 12% polyester, 2% nylon, “great for everyday use” and 100% ludicrous). Frequently bought with the socks, meanwhile, is the Hillary Clinton Toilet Paper Set (her face on every sheet of a loo roll).

Hang on, there's more. Customers who bought that also bought the Fake Breast Squeeze Boob Hand Stress Reliever Ball, and some who bought that bought the 12 Sides Sex Position Dice For Bachelor Party Or Adult Couples. It, you won't be surprised to learn, is frequently bought with a circular plastic item whose full name I'll spare you but which is also referred to as a Male Enlargement Ring. I'm sure somebody who bought that also bought a copy of Think Big by one Donald J Trump, though sadly the algorithm gods weren't feeling benevolent enough to throw it in as a suggestion the day I looked.

Still, it's a fun game isn't it? The next two years until Brexit will fly by.

The new black

APPARENTLY something called Millennial Pink is now the fashion colour of choice for people who care about such things. Those who hate pink – and they are legion, on both sides of the gender divide – have taken to calling it Post-Pink, so they can pretend it isn't pink. Or Camomile. Or Gravadlax. Or even Elastoplast.

Whatever they call it, it's still pink and it's everywhere this season. Yes, even for blokes. “The dusty hue invading menswear,” screeched the headline in an Esquire article about it published last week.

You'd think all of this would put a spring in the step of Scotland football captain Darren Fletcher. But it hasn't. Or maybe he just doesn't read fashion magazines. Anyway, he's irked that Scotland are once again going to have to play in their pink away strip when they take on England in a World Cup qualifying tie in June, despite the game being at Hampden. “When I saw the pink kit I did everything I could to stop us wearing it,” he says, recalling the pink-clad Scots' first game against the Auld Enemy at Wembley in November. “I was asking 'What are we doing?'”

That same question was uppermost in fans' minds, though it was as pertinent to the performance as it was the colour of the kit: Scotland lost three nil, you may recall. Sorry for the reminder. Still, with fashion's tone wheel turning towards pink perhaps the wheel of fortune will turn too and favour the men in Elastoplast.

England, for the record, will probably be turning out in their new away kit, which is blue. So if we do beat them, there's no prizes for guessing what the Tartan Army will be bellowing out from the Hampden stands: “Are you Scotland in disguise?”

Stoney-faced strikers

STILL with football, ex-Arsenal and Republic of Ireland striker Niall Quinn must be delighted, if a little perplexed, that the good people of Madeira have decided to place a statue of him at the island's airport. No less perplexed is Real Madrid and Portugal striker Cristiano Ronaldo, whose likeness it's supposed to be. But as we all know, these days the court of public opinion is social media, and if social media says it looks a lot more like Quinn than Ronaldo, then it does. Besides, there's already a statue to Ronaldo in Madeira, as well as a museum devoted to him, so it's not like he can't spare one.

The sculptor, Madeiran artist Emanuel Santos, says Ronaldo was actually perfectly happy with the statue when he saw it as a work-in-progress. “From the messages he sent, I could tell that he liked what he saw,” Santos told Portuguese website Globo. “He only asked for some wrinkles that gave him a certain expression in his face when he's about to laugh to be changed. He said it made him look older and asked for it to be thinned out a bit to make it smoother and more jovial.”

Happily, everyone else looks like they're laughing now too.

Amo, amas, a misprint

WHEN not reading Plutarch or watching their Up Pompeii! boxsets, there's nothing classical scholars love more than trawling Google Images and LOL-ing at all the tattoos they find written in bad Latin.

The poster girl for these errata stigmata (does that sound right?) is ex-model Danielle Lloyd, who in 2009 had the phrase “Quis attero mihi tantum planto mihi validus” inked on her left shoulder. It means: “To diminish me will only make me stronger.” Only it doesn't. It actually means: “I, who wear away for myself, I only set in place for myself, being strong.” Even worse, the “I” there has to be male, apparently. Mind you, it still makes more sense than an Ed Sheeran lyric.

For a decade or so, Latin tattoos have been as fashionable as Millennial Pink is today, so there are thousands of grammatically suspect ones out there inked onto shoulders, backs, arms and more intimate parts, many cooked up using dodgy online translators. But it could have been a lot worse had it not been for classics dude Dr David Butterfield of Cambridge University.

Since 2007 he has been providing an online translation service for anyone who contacted him with a tattoo-based query. Among the requests he received were Latin translations for “the true Muscles from Brussels” (that's a Jean-Claude Van Damme reference for anyone who hasn't seen Kickboxer) and “feed the meat in my bone” (no explanation at all needed there).

Now, however, Dr Butterfield has had enough. Writing in the current edition of something called Spectator Life he issues a sort of mea culpa (Latin for 'fessing up) and says he feels partly responsible for the craze. He's understandably proud of his work – “My small service is that such subcutaneous gems now lurk in the decent obscurity of a learned language” – but thinks it's time for people to think long and hard about tattoos, and Latin ones in particular.

Ignore his advice at your peril, people. As they used to say in Rome (at least according to my dodgy online Latin translator): Otio In Actum Festinatione Ad Pœnitentiam Agant ("Act in haste, repent at leisure").