Category Archives: Gaelic

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.”