Playing detective
IT was National Coming Out Day yesterday, and we were much taken with the role of a popular Scottish crime drama in writer John Grindrod's revelation to his parents that he was gay. Wrote John: "I decided to do it during an advert break in Taggart, because I knew that afforded me a short window as everyone would want to be concentrating on the TV again rather than wanting to go into more detail. Marj didn't bat an eyelid, and said, 'Oh is that all?' while smiling supportively. John started to mumble something about 'phases' before Marj told him to shut up. And that was that. It was barely ever mentioned again, partly because a distinct lack of boyfriends for the following two decades made it a rather barren topic."
Winging it
WE asked about wayward shots at golf, and Jim McGuffie says: "I was playing the Darnley course at Troon where my friend extolled the fact that he only needed a birdie down the last hole to win the medal, whereupon teeing off he got his birdie - the seagull though didn’t survive."
Not PC
WE have mentioned nicknames before, but a retired Lanarkshire police officer tells us about one that was job specific. He says: "In Lanarkshire, a diminutive lady police constable was known as 'Lap-Top' because she was a small PC."
Well oiled
A PIECE of nostalgia as our stories about expensive cups of coffee remind Dave Purdie: "Parodist Bill Hill wrote the song Scottish Holiday, recorded by The Corries, which was about the travails of an English tourist in the Highlands, and one of the verses refers to catching the ferry to Mull with the lines 'Ye pay twenty pence for coffee wi' the tang o' diesel oil / Ye're experiencing the swindle o' the isles!' When I first heard the song, twenty pence certainly seemed a bit steep for a coffee, with or without a soupçon of diesel, but I'd settle for it now."
Dear oh dear
TALKING of things that are a bit dear, a Paisley reader phones to tell us: "Did you see the news story about the identity of the woman who spent £16m in Harrods over a decade being revealed? Apparently she blew her cover when she was spotted ordering some hot food on an easyJet flight."
Dauber
A RAVE is being staged at Glasgow's SWG3 on October 20 with music influenced by Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds soundtrack and videos of paintings that artist Lee Robertson has created by imagining Glasgow's water towers in the east end as giant UFOs. Lee tells us: "I went up and took photos of the water towers before doing my paintings and I did get a few kids asking, 'Whit ye daein?' When I told them I was an artist they thought it was pretty cool you could have that as a job. They got that I thought they looked like UFOs, but still thought I was daft."
Ya dancer
WELL all the talk amongst Strictly Come Dancing fans is whether Seann Walsh should continue on the show after being caught snogging his dance partner outside a pub. A Glasgow reader gets in touch to explain: "The BBC on-line news story about it has the headline "Strictly's Seann Walsh: 'I'm not the person I'm being portrayed as'. That's perfectly true as the show has been claiming that he was a comedian."
Spidery handwriting
SEEMS to be a lot of spiders around in this wet weather, and a lot of screams as well when they are discovered. But as a Hillhead reader points out: “Have you ever thought that being a spider must be pretty stressful? When you meet anything bigger than you it is either going to run away screaming or try to murder you immediately.”
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