Testing experience

IT was hard not to sympathise yesterday with the Scottish pupils - and their parents, of course - who anxiously awaited the SQA exam certificates. Naturally, many of them took to Twitter to express their apprehension at the endless wait, an attitude summed up by one mother who tweeted: “Omg, where the hell is the bloody postie? Don’t they know I have a daughter that’s freakin out”.

Not everyone else was entirely sympathetic, though - witness the person who wrote: “If I was a postman today I’d drive everywhere at 10mph just to add to the tension”.

“Don’t worry about your #examresults, young ones”, someone else counselled. “I passed all of mine and I’m still miserable and hate my job”.

Stamford Bridge over Troubled Waters

NEWS that Chelsea’s billionaire owner Roman Abramovich, who has announced that he and his third wife, Daria Zhukova, are to separate after 10 years together, has given rise to speculation that he is getting through life-partners almost as fast as he gets through first-team managers.

Heating up

UNFORTUNATE mishearings of our time. Jim McDonald says he once served on the Property Committee of his local church, where his responsibilities covered all plumbing and the church and buildings’ heating system.

Prior to gas-fired heating being installed, coal-fired boilers had supplied the heating. Coal would be stored in the boiler house, and part of the coal bunker, a dado wall, still remained.

During a committee meeting it was agreed to remove the dado wall, says Jim. “We were about to move on to the next item on the agenda when a voice was heard asking: ‘What’s a dildo wall?’

“There was a silence for a millisecond and then the whole committee roared with laughter”, he adds. “Except for the bemused member who had asked the question”.

Too casual by half

RUSSELL Smith contributes an anecdotal encounter to the Diary’s job-interview thread.

Interviewer: “Where have you worked?’”

Applicant: “Here and there.”

Interviewer: “What did you work at?”

Applicant:”This and that.”

Interviewer (ending things with a certain flourish): “Come back and see us now and again.”

Wings over Venice

MALCOLM Buchanan is the latest Diary reader to send in a picture of venerable concert-ticket subs, alerted by the item last week about tickets for a 1981 Glasgow concert by The Cure selling on eBay for £222. Malcolm’s tickets, it has to be said, are impressive: a concert in St Mark’s Square, Venice, in September 1976, by none other than “Paul McCartney and The Wings”. A great concert, he tells us, based on the Band on the Run album.

Who loves ya, baby?

AND still we can’t quite bring ourselves to leave fabled Glasgow barber’s shops. Andy Cameron says Ionta’s, in the Gallowgate, was never empty, and there was a queue from 6.30am onwards.

At some stage, he says, the door would crash open and in would come The Detective. Jimmy was a local boy who would go straight to the phone and call headquarters:”Yes, yes, I have the suspects under my control, sir - I’ll keep them here in Ionta’s ‘til you get here’.

“There were only two problems with this; Jimmy was a local character - and Ionta’s didnae have a phone”, adds Andy. “Kojak never got as many laughs as The Detective did”.