Guilty
THE announcement of another Royal Baby has made us think about baby stories that have appeared in the Diary over the years - including the Glasgow sheriff who was asked by a nervous jury member if he could be excused duty as his wife "was about to conceive". The sheriff was momentarily taken aback until he replied: "I believe you mean 'deliver'. But either way, you should be there.”
Music to his ears
TALKING of which, a Scot living in America who was heavy with child, informed us that she and her husband checked out the local hospital where the baby was due to be born, and discovered the facilities were more like a hotel. The birthing room had a spa bath, soft music and candles.
"What do you think?" she asked her husband. "It was a place like this," he replied, "that got us into this trouble in the first place."
Sucker
A READER was once sitting beside a mother on a plane who breast-fed her baby during the flight. As they were coming in to land, the cheery steward checking seat belts, said to the mum: "He was hungry!" "Not really," replied the mum. "It's just that my doctor said it would help alleviate the pressure in the baby's ears." "Goodness," replied the steward. "And all these years I've been sucking sweets.”
Lighter moment
WE recall the taxi driver in Inverness who picked up a pregnant woman at five in the morning who told him: "Get us to the hospital!" He drove as fast as he could, running red lights, but just as he approached the hospital she shouted at him: "Stop! Stop!" The anxious driver asked her: "Are you having the baby now?" But she replied: "No, I want a cigarette before I go in.”
Picture this
SCHOOL proms are a growing phenomenon in Scotland - fancy parties for teenagers leaving school for the last time. An Ayrshire reader once told us: "Since school proms caught hold here, it has become custom and practice for the various mums, aunties, and big sisters to go along to the hotel to watch the little dears arrive.
"The staff at one hotel saw something last week they have never seen before - when two of the pupils at one school brought along their babies, all dolled-up, to be in the prom pictures, before being handed over to granny and taken home.”
Snap
SOME men just don't react the right way when colleagues start discussing welcome additions to their family. As Simon Caine once admitted: "Someone just showed me a photo of their baby on their mobile, and my first response was, 'Why are you still using an iPhone 4?’"
Phoo-phooed the idea
IN the nice try department is the young Glasgow father whose wife was changing their new baby's nappy and who suggested that he take a turn. "I'll do the next one," he said from behind his newspaper. When the time came for another nappy change, his wife looked pointedly at him and he replied: "I meant the next baby.”
The Balkan question
DODGY subtitling on the telly, and a reader told us his favourite was a report on childbirth which stated on the screen that in some cases babies had to be delivered "by four Serbs”.
Pushy
AND it is never a bad thing to end with a Chic Murray line. As he once declared in his slow methodical drawl: "When I was a baby my mother paid for someone to push my pram. I've been pushed for money ever since’."
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