Monthly Archives: February 2010

Now the cat’s dead, so what is there to keep these two apart?

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YOU hear such great conversations at the supermarket checkout. A pensioner was with her daughter who had just bought her soya milk. There are many claimed health benefits of the soya bean. Indeed, I often pour it on my own All-Bran.

For some who have been around for longer than the rest of us, however, it is still unproven. They regard it with some suspicion and consider it best avoided. New food products, they maintain, are generally gimmicks to get them to spend more money and they are often prone to cause reactions in less-robust digestive systems.

The lady in question stared at the carton of soya milk. Holding it up to the light as if to see through it, she shook her head. Shoving it back to her daughter, she – and I translate from the magnificent original Gaelic – rubbished it with a dismissive: “If it’s not cows’ milk, I just dread to think what beast had to be milked to get that stuff.”

Misunderstandings can also get us into much trouble. Not that I misunderstood reports reaching me of cavorting going on in the town last week.

I know it was Monday because I was home alone, as that was the night Mrs X went out, supposedly to visit some pals.

By noon on Tuesday, reports reached me of a woman not unlike my beloved having being seen downtown gyrating in a non-Free Church fashion.

After first high-stepping with a certain Mr John Shaw, the distinguished and well-travelled Harrisman, my informant reported spotting her tripping the light fantastic with another roguish fellow. One of military bearing, he was described as. Could it be? Not Donnie “The Moth” Campbell. He of D.M. Campbell, the famed turf accountants of Stornoway town? You can bet your bottom dollar it was.

Remind me to tell you later how he came to be known as The Moth. I can categorically state it was not because of any sightings of the wee beasties when he prises open his wallet. Because, apparently, he never does.

I do, though, have a great deal of sympathy for the snazzy Mr Campbell. After all, it is nigh on 10 years since he found himself at the sharp end of a legal action which cost him dearly. It was all because of one of his most devoted and loyal chums – Sami his cat.

Being a practical former Royal Marine commando, he would always make sure all the wee tasks that needed doing were always done, so he asked his betting shop clerk, Chris Ann, who was also a former girlfriend, to do a few jobs for him as he was going away. Nothing major. Just looking after his house and his car. That sort of thing. Oh, and feeding moggy Sami every day.

Hold on one cotton-picking minute, thought Chris Ann. She was only a clerk. And Donnie was only her ex. Why should she have to do all that? After all, she wasn’t paid to do extra jobs. She was a bookie’s clerk.

He was just a flipping ex, she thought. She would give him ex, all right. She extrapolated that Donnie was extremely excessive in his expectations by exceeding the exactitudes of her job description. So she expressed as much. Just a misunderstanding, he explained. But her excoriation made him decide she was expendable and he extended her P45. She then expeditiously executed a tribunal claim seeking exoneration and the extraction of exorbitant expenses. The panel extolled her claims, said Donnie’s defence was extraneous and ordered that he be relieved of £16,370. Exactly.

Ouch. Not a good day for Donnie. He had lost all that money, lost a member of staff at the bookies and Chris Ann, of whom, we all suspected, he was still fond, had obviously sent him to Coventry. Still, he had the very wise and sociable Sami to keep him company. Och well. That was something. Pish-wish, furball.

Then, splendid news: Donnie and Chris Ann were reconciled. They were stepping out again. All that messy tribunal stuff was forgotten about. Hey, steady on. For a wee while, anyway.

When I came across Chris Ann the other day, I asked her if it was really 10 years since that famous tribunal. It was, indeed, she said, with not a little triumph and exuberance. And she had outlived the cat, she declared. After everything that had happened, it was a cause for celebration that she was still around, but that darned feline whose needs had been put ahead of her own had scratched her last. Everything was now purrfect, she said.

Oops, no love lost there, then.

So Donnie is still rattling around in that big mansion on his lonesome ownsome with not even a pussy to nuzzle up to on these frosty nights, as Sami has been rehomed in that great cattery in the sky.

By now, you can probably tell that I am not holding out much hope of a spring wedding for Donnie and Chris Ann this year, either. All over a silly misunderstanding.

Poor Donnie. I fear the stresses and strains are now getting to him. He’s been acting very strangely for a while now.

I was going to tell you how he got his nickname, wasn’t I?

Some time ago, I heard a knock at the door late one night. When I opened it, there was the dapper Mr Campbell. He seemed quite distressed.

“You have to help me, Iain,” he wailed. “I keep thinking I’m a moth.”

I was taken aback. What can you say to a local businessman in a collar and tie standing on your doorstep at midnight telling you he thinks he is a large insect of the butterfly family that lives in chests of drawers and feasts on underwear?

“You think you’re a moth? That is not normal. Look, Donnie, I don’t think it’s me you need to see, but a doctor.”

“Ach, I know,” he said. “But your light was on.”

How a very cold day and a dry mouth almost led to my divorce

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IT’S all because of these flirting celebs. If Mrs X hadn’t seen something in the paper about footballer Ashley Cole and TV presenter Vernon Kay using their mobiles for hanky-panky, she wouldn’t have even thought of checking mine.

She is so fly. During the break in Corrie, she sent me off to make a cuppa. That was just an excuse to rifle through my sent texts.

“Ah-ha. What’s this?” I heard her bellow, just as I was reaching for the Gypsy Creams.

She had found a very suspicious sent message as she frantically stabbed the buttons on my Samsung before we resumed our peek into the traumas of Gail Platt’s life.

The text said: “Mines a huge 1.” No surprise there, you wouldn’t have thought. Just one problem. I hadn’t sent it to her.

Call me

She hit the proverbial roof. “Whose mobile number is this?” she raged.

Before I could even stutter, she wanted me to divulge which trollop I had decided to impress with this short and, she roared, fictional literary masterpiece.

She made up her mind there and then. This was all the proof necessary for the divorce courts. That one text was all she needed to demonstrate to the sheriff that I was capable of boasting in a most unseemly way to one of the trio of floozies I had gallivanted out to lunch with last week. But which one was the recipient?

Neen? Quite possibly, she thought. Ann Ross from the council? Probably. She looked a right feisty one, she decided.

Who was the third one, she demanded. Only Gaelic radio’s answer to Loose Women, I announced.

“No. Not . . . not that Seonag Monk woman? I should have known.”

I thought she might be impressed that I moved in such glitzy showbiz circles. But no. She was now absolutely convinced I was at it, whatever “at it” means.

Not that I am suggesting any looseness on Seonag’s part, you understand. It is just that she is on the radio in the mid-afternoon when ITV2 repeats the earlier midday showing of Loose Women.

I have recently learned from ladies who lunch that it is that second showing which so many of them like to settle down to with a cup of green tea in one hand and a ginger nut in the other. Except when Seonag is on the radio, obviously.

My life was unravelling before me. It was made clear I had been caught texting dirty, so I was for the high jump. It was only a matter of time, she said, until she had the finest legal brains above the Lloyds TSB on Francis Street forensically going through my communications for the last 14 years and she would be taking half the house, half the car and half the dog. Ugh, is that why they say divorces can be so messy?

Unfortunately for Mrs X and her plan, I had not sent that message to any of my elegant dining companions at the Eleven restaurant.

Would she believe the truth? Hadn’t a clue. I did think of making up a yarn to explain it away. I would say I was walking on the beach with the dog and I had come across an old wartime mine.

I had phoned bomb disposal and they said they were on the way but to text them with any updates.

And that, my darling, was why I sent: “Mines a huge 1.”

Even if she can be a bit gullible at times, there is no way even she would swallow that one.

It was time to come clean. Confession is good for the soul and all that.

So I told her how I had actually sent that message to the well-coiffured, devil-may-care, man-about-town Mr George Gawk. She looked thunderstruck.

Then she quickly wished me and George all the very best and hoped we would be very happy in our new life together.

If she got an invitation to our civil partnership ceremony, she assured me that we could even keep both halves of the dog. Aw, that’s nice. She’s so sweet.

What am I saying? No. You don’t understand. Me and George are not like that. Not that way. No. That text was not one of an intimate nature. It was a drinks order.

We had been due to meet in one of the very few pubs that George is not currently barred from. He had texted me: “I’ll get you a wee rum if I get there first.”

When George is buying, the rums are always very wee. So I responded, because it was chilly without, that I would prefer a double serving of demerara. Which is why I had used the words: “Mines a huge 1.”

So it was actually a request, not a statement of fact. It looks worse because with texts there is no room for explanation. You have to write it the shortest way.

Like Sarah Brown, the PM’s wife. When she writes in texts and on Twitter, she always refers affectionately to her DH. That was a bit puzzling. DH? Was she making waves with David Hasselhoff? Or moping for Douglas Hogg, the Tory MP accused of claiming expenses for cleaning his moat? None of them. DH is her way of referring to her darling husband. Yeuch.

If it had been an e-mail, I would probably have put: “Dear, sweet Mr Campbell, thank you so much for your very kind invitation asking me to join you for a snifter. Remember, a’ Sheòrais, you are in the chair this time. Because of the inclement weather conditions, I would be supremely grateful if you would make mine as large as you like. Come on, George, you tight-fisted Bacach. It is about time you put your hand in your pocket. With my very best wishes and my fondest love. Iain.”

Just kidding, of course. There is no way I would put in that last bit. I would just stop at fondest love.

Alex Salmond’s duty of care – to tell the truth

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Alex Salmond insists that MSPs have a duty of care to their constituents? Since when? Duty of care is a legal term for having specific responsibilities to ensure safety from harm through, just for example, negligence.
However, the law is not a harmful process which people need to be protected from. Quite the opposite. If MSPs have an over-riding duty of care it is to their law-abiding constituents who need protection from dedicated fraudsters and criminals like Ms Sturgeon’s crooked new friend, Mr Rauf.
Obviously, the First Minister would never resort to falsifying the position to help even a beleagured colleague. However, this one requires his full and unequivocal explanation.

Isn’t it funny how people get attached to their appliances?

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SHE will kill me if I even hint at her name, but I cannot but recount how someone I know became very attached recently to one of her household appliances.

This kindly soul had been feeling the occasional twinge of arthritis in her legs and was concerned about it. She tried the various NHS prescriptions, but with only partial success. Then her thoughts began to turn to the less conventional treatments that we hear about sometimes and which are always pooh-poohed by the medical establishment.

Worth a try, she reckoned. Just see if they make any difference. She heard other sufferers say magnetic bracelets had helped them.

Doctors and scientists gasp at these claims because, under laboratory conditions at any rate, they can find no proof of any benefit. They sneer, claiming that it is all in the mind. Funny, then, that one of these men of science who had written it was all bunkum was found, some years later, to be wearing one of the bracelets himself. Hmm.

So my friend wondered if she should explore this unproven alternative therapy to see if it could have any effect on those annoying pangs in her legs. The solution recommended to her was a larger affair than a bracelet. A sizeable magnet was contained in this surgical support affair which was then wrapped around her knee.

She had it fitted last week. Hoping for quick relief, she then set about making the tea for the family after putting a mixed load in the washing machine. The machine was slooshing away nicely to itself. She got bread from the bin in the cupboard above it and turned for the teapot, but couldn’t. She tried to turn the other way but couldn’t do that, either. She was stuck.

Her right leg had stopped working. She could feel it fine, but it was strangely immobile. Oh-oh. Panic. Was she having some kind of attack? In fact, the whole right side of her body just seemed frozen to the spot. She could move her left leg, but she just didn’t have the strength to move over to the chair. She couldn’t bend down and she couldn’t reach up. What terrible ailment had crippled her?

Thankfully, she wasn’t in pain and knew her husband would be home soon. So she relaxed a bit. Then she realised she was actually stuck fast to the washing machine. Like a magnet. A magnet? It dawned on her. Yes, it was the magnetic knee wrap for her rheumatism that was keeping her thigh firmly attached to the appliance. It was really stuck fast.

Suddenly, a click. The washing machine began its spin cycle. Her efforts to extricate herself must have somehow dislodged the washing machine from its mounting, so, when the spinning began, the whole machine began to really vibrate and jump up and down. And, because she was firmly clamped to it, so did she.

She couldn’t even reach the socket to put it off and, when she tried to reach behind her for the off switch, she only managed to press something which made it go faster.

It rattled and rolled as it gave the hankies, dishcloths and frilly underthings inside it a good going over, leaving my friend all shook up. In some of these modern machines, the spin is powerful and goes on for ages. This was one of them.

By the time the throbbing machine finally slowed and began the rinse, the heavy vibration had bedraggled her with sheer exhaustion. That is not good for a woman of her age.

It’s not funny. It’s really not. Well, it is a bit, but it wasn’t for her at the time. Now fully recovered, and demagnetised, she has been playing down her own hour of trauma. She can now manage a weak smile when people say they always knew she had a magnetic personality. They also ask if the machine was made by Toyota. Was the accelerator jammed? People can be so cruel.

It is also cruel that Valentine’s Day is upon us again. It can’t be a year since we last suffered. Do married women of a certain age still expect something on February 14? There has to be a cut-off point when we men can just down tools and be allowed to stop trying to impress. It’s not as if some of us even hooked up with them because we were incurable romantics or even because we looked much better than the back end of Bus na Comhairle.

Our womenfolk obviously thought we had other endearing attributes: a sizzling personality, a vulnerability that brought out the mother in them, or even a look so glaikit that they felt they had to take us indoors out of harm’s way. Whatever it was, I’m cool with it.

But I’d better not chance it. So I’ve got till the weekend to try to come up with something that she will think delightful and precious – in other words, a complete waste of time and money – so she will consider me to have been inspired and thoughtful. Great.

A couple of years ago, I forgot. As the day wore on, the present Mrs Maciver became morose and grumpy. I had no idea what was going on. By teatime, she was slamming doors and serving up chicken goujons one step away from being charcoal. Still nothing dawned on me.

That night, there was something on the news about the record sales of Valentine cards. The penny dropped. Oops, I thought. “Right, I’m off, you uncaring old swine,” she obviously thought.

She did what she always does when she is agitated with me. She drove off in first gear, smoke trailing behind her. She is quite a sight when she does that; stooring off round the corner, engine roaring in a cloud of indignant exhaust fumes and, because she forgets to change gear, she doesn’t manage to get past 10mph.

Hey. I’ve just had an idea. Maybe I should get her a Toyota.

I am busy keeping my wayward wife and preparing for election

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WOKE up this morning and there was no sign of Mrs X. Ah, she must be cooking a special breakfast for me, I thought. I’ll tiptoe down and surprise her. No, she’s not in the kitchen. Not in the loo. Garden shed? Nope.

No note on the fridge to say she has gone round to her sister’s? No. Of course, she has taken the mutt for a walk in the castle grounds. No, Hector’s still in his basket. Don’t panic; there must be a perfectly simple explanation. No, there isn’t. She has run off with someone. And it’s usually someone the wronged partner knows. Who was the last person I saw giving her a peck on the cheek?

Jimmy Ogilvie. Having had cataracts removed from both his eyes, he actually told me how it had changed his life as he can see pretty girls for the first time. Now he has changed my life by skipping off with my old missus.

He has single-handedly ruined my life; that’s what he’s done. Things will never be the same again. I’ll have to do my own cooking and stuff.

What did the fork-tongued Laird of Ogilvie Towers (currently closed to the general public) see in her? Everything, obviously, after his eye ops. And what was the attraction for her? I bet he’s got loads of money. We’ve all seen Jimmy O, sitting there in the corner of the Lewis and the Carlton sipping fine Napoleon brandy from his fancy crystal goblet. Shamelessly flaunting his bulging wallet, he has turned my beloved’s head.

Not that I haven’t got a wee bulge myself, you understand. It’s just not in my back pocket. Mine is more upfront, if you know what I mean. However, having just appointed Binnie, one of the superstars off the Gaelic TV weight-loss show Farpais Fhallain, as my personal trainer, I’ll soon slim down and blacken both of Ogilvie’s roving eyes.

Wait. Was it not Donnie Saunders I last saw planting a kissag on her? Donnie flipping Saunders. Him off the radio. I should have known. She has a thing about those broadcast types. Well, well. What the heck has he got that I haven’t got? Apart from a Crocodile Dundee hat?

And she is a stranger to the truth. She told me she didn’t like beards on men when I went a bit Adrian Chiles. Scarlet woman that she is. Right, sit down in a quiet room. Deep breaths. That’s it; into the living room.

“Hullo, darling, come in. Andy Murray was two sets down, but he is coming back now.”

There, bold as you like, was the alleged hussy herself in front of the telly, a cup of coffee in one hand and a breakfast crumpet in the other, looking as if the only bulges on her mind were the ones delivering Murray’s forearm smashes. She had sneaked downstairs at 8am to watch it.

Good morning, dear. You watch the tennis. I’ll just go and write something for the P&J.

First, though, I boil myself an egg to celebrate the return of my prodigal wife and wonder how Margaret Thatcher scoffed up to 28 a week to lose weight before the 1979 election. Maybe she kept up that regime afterwards, too.

Her Cabinet was probably so desperate to get upwind of her they would agree to anything.

“Right, let’s bomb the Belgrano. What do you say, John Nott?”

“Yes, yes, Margaret, whatever you say. Now would someone please open a window.”

It is important I study the habits of high-profile political figures in case I decide to stand at the expected forthcoming election on May 6. A letter arrived the other day asking me to allow my name to be put forward to be the Christian Party candidate. So I have cleared my diary.

Snigger ye not. It is an American-style open primary, so it’s open to anyone to be selected. And they are, we hear, having a bit of difficulty finding someone of the right calibre. They say they want someone to rock the boat. So call me, Rev Hargreaves.

My only mistake was showing the plea to sometime Labour apparatchik Callum Ian MacMillan. I suspect he’s now going for it, too. I told him it will take more than going now and again to listen to Rev Kenny I, and knowing upbeat Father Tom Kearns, the self-confessed former 1960s London swinger who is priest in the Catholic church, to become the ideal ecumenical candidate.

Kenny in the SNP office admits they are worried down there. They’ve heard the MacMillan fellow is the preferred candidate of the Gideons, the bedside-Bible crowd. Bet the Gideons are in Kenny I’s flock, too. That’s what I’m up against – cliques.

My secret weapon is that I’m going to be a doctor. I won’t be ripping out any appendixes just yet as I will be a doctor of divinity.

I came across this site on the internet, you see. All I had to do was answer a question or two like who was Adam and what does the word covet mean when they talk about your neighbour’s wife in the 12 commandments. Take note, the covetous Messrs Ogilvie and Saunders.

Just sent a hefty cheque, for post and packing, to an American college. I think it is really kosher in a general, non-Jewish way. Now a scroll confirming my new academic status is winging its way back across the pond.

My manifesto will say those who covet others’ wives will be put to death. No messing about.

Mrs X is shouting from downstairs that Andy Murray has lost to Roger Federer. Fantastic game, she says, but Andy is just saving himself for the ardours of a certain summer tournament in Wimbledon. Yeah yeah, whatever.

I’m still worried that Mrs X herself might be still saving herself for the ardours of that Ogilvie fellow – or that Saunders.