Cementing a relationship
JUST one, urgent, question surrounding Donald Trump’s rumoured flying visit to Scotland: Is there enough time to build a great big beautiful wall to keep him out?
And there’s an interesting suggestion on the Stop Trump Coalition Facebook page, relating to his possible trip to the UK. “Maybe we could help some refugees sneak into America while he’s out”, it says.
Inconvenient
LIFE on the road isn’t always as glamorous as it’s cracked up to be.
Scots alt. blues troubadour Dave Arcari, who plays Glasgow Calling, at McChuill’s, on July 28, and Milngavie’s Mugstock Festival on July 30, has been recalling an incident from the time he played a show with Steve Earle.
Each musician had his own dressing-room but what Dave didn’t realise was that the shared toilet could be accessed from each room. Dave was engaged in using the facilities prior to the show when the other door opened and in walked Steve - who, if he was taken aback, hid it well.
Both of them had a good laugh about it, though.
Matt finish
AND sometimes being a bestselling author isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, either.
Our Man on the Edinburgh-Pisa Ryanair plane reports that an overhead locker sprang open during a flight last week and a rolled-up camping mat fell out and fetched the passenger beneath a blow to the head.
Thus did an entertaining contretemps ensue between the formidable Val McDermid and the hapless owner of said mat. We know who our money would have been on.
Road to nowhere
ANDY Cameron, picking up our thread about travellers asking for directions, recalls an anecdote related by the great Peter Ustinov on the Parkinson show in the 1980s.
He told of driving through rural Ireland and, coming to a fork in the road, asked a local chap, who was sitting on a fence, if he was on the right road to Ballyjamesduff.
The local said he’d heard of it but didn’t know where it was, so Ustinov decided to take the right fork. About 300 yards on, he sees in his rear-view mirror that there are now two fellas and they are waving frantically for him to come back. Peter reverses all the way down the single-track road where the first guy says “’Dis is me brother, he doesn’t know where it is either”.
Long way around
ON the same theme, David Miller relates how a couple stopped and asked the way to McKenna’s Pub.
A local told them: “Walk 100 yards to the left, turn up the hill, take a left turn and walk about 200 yards, another left turn down the hill, left again and walk about 100 yards.”
“But that”ll bring us back here”, they point out.
“Yes”, comes the reply, “and McKenna’s Pub is just across the road”.
You know you’re getting old
WHEN .... you’ve forgotten where you when when Kennedy was assassinated (Keith McClory)
... when the tribute bands are getting as old as the originals (Donald Macaskill).
Yule be lucky
EARLY July, and the first Christmas-related PR email of the year lands in the Diary inbox, promoting a festive-product launch in London three weeks from today. Is this some sort of record?
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