Tag Archives: Ann

Dr Who’s in Harris Tweed but what is Gaelic for Dalek?

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JUST how far will sometimes-scary Doctor Who take its tie-up with Harris Tweed? Now that we know the new doctor will be wearing a fine 1960s-type dogtooth check jacket in the next series, it could open the door for the time lord to take to the hills where once the wool which went into his clobber was attached firmly to a subsidised sheep.

Whatever next for the longest-running sci-fi series in the world? Daleks in Dalmore? Cybermen in Shulishader? The Master in Melbost Borve? A Tardis in Tolsta?

Recently, I was summoned over to the Carloway Mill by the new boss to discuss a bit of business. Oh, here we go, I thought, another long confab about market trends in Japanese textiles with a whiskery, whisky-stained mill manager in a tweed rig-out, an unmatching tweed tie, a crumpled trilby and, judging by his lack of comfort, tweed Y-fronts as well.

I’d better wear mine, I thought. Wouldn’t want to look out of place, you know.

The door of the mill was open, so in I trundled. Try as I might, I couldn’t find any managerial types with prickly bristles on their chin or anywhere else. Then, in one of the offices, I found a secretary. She was on the phone.

A tall, expressive damsel, she gestured in my direction when she noticed me. Eh? Did she want me to wait two minutes or was she telling me to get out of her office right now? I wasn’t entirely sure from that particular gesture.

The “secretary” turned out to be designer Ann MacCallum, whom I have known since her days in charge of the Pick ’n’ Mix in Woolies. She was now in charge of the mill, she said.

Yeah, right. That was a statement that was so wrong on so many levels. If she was the boss of the tweed mill, why was she not dressed like a tweed mill boss?

Traditionally, they are walking, talking advertisements for their own products, showing off various eye-catching creations in classic herringbone and check.

I didn’t think Ann was wearing any coarse materials down below because she was not walking funny in the way that world-weary sufferers of the dreaded double-width itch do. Just think of Rae Mackenzie. That’s all I’m saying.

And, apparently, she is not a man. Eh? Was I expected to believe a mill manager would turn up to oversee dyeing, drying, spinning and stuff in lippy and a dollop of mascara?

Yes, she barked. She was the guv’nor. Now did I want this work or not?

Yes, ma’am. No further questions. Oh heck, me and my mouth.

The MP came out with a good one when he said endorsement by Doctor Who showed that Harris Tweed was timeless. It could be worn at any time and by any age. And in any galaxy.

Now we have all these inquiries from people wanting to know about Doctor Who and his tweed. I’d no idea the new doctor had gone all tweedy.

I knew he whizzed around at warp speed – but weft and warp? I was thinking back to Patrick Troughton and Tom Baker. Did they have suits of clò mór? Or the other, more-recent, Scottish son of the manse with a name like a brewery? No, didn’t think so.

The new time traveller is one Matt Smith. He looks far too young to be a time lord but, then again, I was scared witless by the adventures of the suave William Hartnell – and he retired in 1966.

Meanwhile, after that exciting Budget, we hear Alistair Darling has no intention of retiring if Labour wins. Yeah, had me on the edge of my seat for hours. Left me completely flummoxed, so I’ve been listening to the analysis by people who know about these things. Their conclusion is cuts, freezes and more cuts.

One enlightening radio debate about the plans set out by the chancellor was on Friday. I think Nicola Sturgeon, Douglas Alexander, Annabel Goldie and, maybe, Jo Swinson took part. Also chucking in his two-penn’orth was the Westminster-based hack from Point, Torcuil Crichton.

He was not that hard on the second lord of the Treasury until he started on about his presentational style. Torcuil alleged Mr Darling was as boring as a CalMac ferry skipper – as dull and safe as that.

Sheesh. I take it from that our Torcuil now has a permanent air travel warrant to whizz back and fore from Stornoway Airport.

There is no way that he can chance his arm travelling in the care of these lovely, caring gentlemen who steer us all so gallantly around the rocks of life. Hey, I sail regularly and am anxious to avoid any mid-Minch trauma.

I had enough trauma on Saturday night. It was all because of my Mrs X’s sister Joey, you see. She is getting married next week and she and the girls were out on her hen night. That was surprising in itself, as she is normally such a quiet and reserved type that I didn’t think she would go in for that sort of thing.

How wrong I was.

She turned up at the County Hotel wearing what I can describe only as a technological innovation. This long, electronic tube thing was wrapped around the whole top of her body. As I called her and wished her an enjoyable evening through the window of the car on Francis Street, Joey turned towards me and this contraption she was wearing suddenly illuminated. In the evening gloom it looked ferociously bright. Well, I was out of the car in a second and rushing for the fire extinguisher in the boot. I thought Joey’s boobs had caught fire.

Still, maybe it is a good omen for Aneas if his new wife can turn on the fires of passion just by the flick of a switch.

Then she can give her sister tips.

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.