Love story
THIS is a strange and concerning era we’re living through, forcing the Diary to nostalgically hark back to a more innocent age: the 1980s.
A time when the kindly Margaret Thatcher united a grateful nation, bringing an end to disharmony. (Apart from the occasional strike, war, riot or political sex scandal.)
And the most advanced media available arrived with a fourth television channel.
Four channels! It was as thrilling as an extra riot every week.
Best of all, Blind Date was on TV, where everyday people met, enjoyed a first date, and hopefully fell in love. (Actually, viewers hoped they’d despise each other. Much more entertaining.)
This week it was announced that Blind Date is being relaunched, which delights this column, for there’s nothing we enjoy more than romance.
Though surely the greatest romance of all is the hot and heavy relationship between the Diary and our devoted readers. We’ve never had a break-up and rarely have a tiff.
To thank you for being so compatible, we’re presenting you with the perfect gift… the following classic tales from our archives.
(Okay, we realise you’d have preferred flowers. We’ll pick up a bunch from the petrol station this evening…)
Jaws of despair
DURING a Second World War blitz, a Clydebank couple exited their top-floor tenement and headed for the air raid shelter.
Upon reaching the bottom of the tenement stairs, the wife wailed: “I’ll need to go back up - I’ve left ma teeth.”
With an exasperated shrug, hubby replied: “It’s bombs they’re droppin’ – no aipples.”
Water palaver
A GLASGOW reader was on a Paris break when the kindly waiter at a pavement café gave a bowl of water to a panting dog that a local woman sitting at an outdoor table was carrying.
When the waiter disappeared, the woman threw the water into a plant pot and refilled it with bottled water she took from her bag.
Space case
THE Barras: always good for a bargain and belly-laugh.
A reader told us his wife’s cousin, visiting from Charleston, South Carolina, found herself in Glasgow’s fabled market.
She was looking for a flag for her car aerial, so asked a stall holder: “Have you got a Scottish flag I can put on my antenna?”
“Missus,” replied the stall holder, “What planet are you from?”
Winging it
EDINBURGH writer Ben Verth was in posh Oxford town when he overheard a chap in the street say on his mobile phone: “Yeah, he’s rich. Megabucks. Probably wipes his bum with pheasant’s wings.”
Talking bull
VISITING Majorca, a reader heard an American tourist in his late teens say: “It’s great to be in Spain. I can’t wait to try that bull wrestling.”
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