Painful question
BBC Scotland reporter Ian Hamilton, who is blind, walked straight into a sign positioned in the approach to the main staircase at Pacific Quay, while on his way into work the other day. The sign read, “Have you ever thought about diversity?” With admirable restraint, Ian’s only comment was “The irony...”.
Pick up the pieces
LEGO has just announced that because of a drop in sales, 1,400 jobs will need to go. Some of their staff must be bricking it, says John Mulholland.
Nuns ‘n’ Roses
MORE band names ruined/improved by the replacement of one letter. Queens of the Scone Age, Nuns ‘n’ Roses, OMG (anon); The Why; Tuna Turner; The Beach Bogs; Poo Fighters; The Cute (Stephen McClymont and colleagues).
The Finks; Deacon Glue; Fake That; Slack Sabbath; Pimply Red; Toe Cure; Gerry and the Lacemakers (Christine Brooks); Silly J Kramer; Gerry and the Facemakers; Small Paces; James Frown, Silly Fury (Irene Elliott).
More, possibly, on Monday, when Len Smith - sorry, Ken Smith - returns.
Language barrier
ANOTHER packet of condom stories, just for the weekend. Brian Chrystal says: “Years ago, I was doing last-minute corrections to some notes before heading off for a post-work drink with some office colleagues, one of whom was a young American lady. Spotting an error in my pencil notes, I asked her if she had a rubber. Bearing in mind the different American understanding of that word, I liked her reply: ‘Let’s just go for a drink and see how we get on from there’.”
Tam Cowan emails with a possibly apocryphal story about “two big Alsatian dugs” having a blether as they walk down Sauchiehall Street.
“Do you take precautions when you make love?”
“Durex.”
“Naw, I asked you first...”
Bad taste in the mouth
ROBIN Gilmour is reminded of The Colonial Restaurant in Glasgow’s High Street, where he and a colleague lunched most days in the 1980s. The gents’ had a condom machine but seldom if ever did it actually contain any product. The owner saw it as a nice little earner as no-one ever complained that he had not received the flavoured product he’d paid £1 for.
Age concern
AND a very elderly Irvine reader recalls passing a coffee shop in Columbia and being given a sachet by a local man in uniform. His equally elderly wife, a few steps behind him, being ignored, demanded that she be given one also.
If she wondered why the man looked so bemused, she got the answer when she glanced inside the packet and saw, not coffee, but a condom, which was being given away as part of a local birth control initiative.
Ties that bind
IAIN Mann, reading yesterday’s Yarrow’s/YSL story, was a member of staff at at the yard in the 1970s.
“We had rather smart ties with the initials YSL prominent,” he says. “Mine was often admired by people I met, with surprise expressed that I was an Yves St Laurent patron and that gents’ ties were included in his fashion range.”
Iain accepted their compliments. He didn’t bother to correct them, either.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here