You don’t say

GIVEN recent events at a well-known hotel, there was a interesting front-page headline in yesterday’s House & Home, the property section of the Dundee Courier, spotted by Olivia Currie.

Getaway at Gleneagles, it reads.

The space between us

POLITICO Europe tweets an observation by Our Man in the Brexit Negotiations, one David Davis MP, to the effect that Brexit is more difficult than the Moon landing. “Difference is we actually got to the ------ Moon”, is the caustic response from actor/writer Mark Gatiss. (Thanks to Foster Evans for this one).

The Irish Question

WOULD it be unkind, Joe McLaughlin wonders, to say that Ruth Davidson has been well and truly Duped by her leader ?

Queen of Scots

THE ink was hardly dry, as it were, on David Ross’s exclusive heraldscotland report yesterday - “Canadian PM Justin Trudeau to visit Scotland next week to meet the Queen” - before Bruce Skivington was emailing to ask: “Which Queen? Nicola or Ruth?”

Crime writer Ian Rankin, interested to learn that Trudeau would be in Edinburgh, tweets that he has already put a drink behind the Oxford Bar, “just on the off-chance...”

No direction home

GORDON Shepherd says: “We were touring Ireland in the car when we had to ask a farmer for directions. We were told: ‘Go right ahead all the way to the T junction and your road is half-a-mile back on the left’.”

Gordon also recalls a rugby trip to Dublin where they ended up in a museum some distance from the city centre. They weren’t all that keen on walking back, so they asked the colleen at reception where the nearest bus stop could be found. Her directions were quite complicated, the stop being a fair distance away. She began to look a little troubled and finally blurted out, “Do you have a car?”

Sugar, sugar

GERRY Knowles says he has read the Diary for years with great amusement (thanks, Gerry - we’re working on this) but felt real empathy with Belle and Sebastian’s Stuart Murdoch who, as we said on Tuesday, had given up lots of things but was finding it difficult to give up sugar,

“In my case”, says Gerry, “having been warned about Type 2 diabetes, I gave up sugar without too much of a problem - but I’m really struggling with booze, dairy, red meat, football and, definitely, the thought of other partners.

“I will keep trying as I am sure Stuart will”, he adds, “but at nearly 68 I wonder if it’s worth the effort”.

You know you’re getting old

WHEN ... ... you ask for a senior citizen’s discount and nobody wants to see any ID

... a Ford Popular appears in some of your wedding photos (both David Walker)

... you hear songs from the punk era in the supermarket of a Saturday afternoon (Paul O’Sullivan)

... you can remember the events in the 50 Years Ago section of The Herald’s From Our Archives column (Jim Taylor)

... you’re more interested in mpg than mph when considering a new car (Neil Armstrong)

... your MP is younger than not just you but most of your offspring too (Ella Smith, gloomily citing the age (31) of her East Renfrewshire MP, Paul Masterton).