A Dash O Doric Read online

  JACKIE ALSO shared a car salesman’s cynicism for all his non-salesmen colleagues. As far as Jackie was concerned, everyone from the suits in the boardroom to the mechanics in the service bay conspired against the sales force.

  One of his favourite approaches to new members of the sales team was to introduce himself and say: “D’ye ken fit’s the motor trade’s guaranteed wye tae avoid catchin a caul?”

  “No.”

  “Gie’t a parts number. Then naebody gets it.”

  WHEN JACKIE’S son, Ewen, announced he wanted to become a mechanic, it took a while for Jackie to adjust to the idea. Then, according to Ewen, he took the boy aside and said: “Div you ken the first thing aboot bein a car mechanic?”

  Ewen said: “Well . . .”

  “Well,” Jackie said, “the first thing tae ken is foo tae open the bonnet, stand back, rub yer chin, shak her heid and say: ‘This’ll be pricey.’”

  “I’ll throw in the paint for nothing.”

  A FYVIE reader recalled a guard on the old Turriff train before the war who had a notoriously bad memory, and who would frequently forget which station they were at. Stumped for an announcement that allowed him to work round his lapse of memory, he would walk through the length of the train calling: “Here ye are for far ye’re gaun. Aa you in here for oot there, get aff.”

  ANOTHER CELEBRATED character in the motor trade was Henry Leask, of Cheyne’s Motorcycles, who used to travel daily to work on the old subbie train from Culter to Aberdeen.

  One morning, an old body sporting wrinkly stockings, curlers under her turban, dilapidated specs and laden with message bags peched her way into Henry’s first-class compartment and plunked herself down in the seat opposite. She gave Henry a friendly, but toothless, grin.

  Henry was a gentleman of the old school. He didn’t mind any companion, but he thought her an unlikely first-class traveller and feared that she might be embarrassed when the ticket-collector arrived. He leaned forward and said, in a discreet whisper: “Excuse me, my dear, but you’re in a first-class seat.”

  She beamed, and replied loudly: “I ken that fine, loon, bit it’s ma birthday the day and I’m giein my dowp a treat.”

  TIMMER ROGERS sold bags of firewood from an old dray cart pulled by an even older horse before World War I. One day, the horse finally collapsed and died in a clatter of harness, shafts and chains.

  Residents and passers-by rushed to see what all the commotion was about and found Timmer looking down sadly at the lifeless remains of his faithful old servant.

  After a few moments, he turned to an onlooker and, with a tear in his eye, said: “I’ve nivver seen it deein that afore.”

  A FAMOUS tale about post-war building magnate Willie Logan involved Willie going on a site visit to the Tay Road Bridge in 1965 and spotting one of his workmen with the sole of his workboot flapping away from the uppers.

  “What do you think you’re playing at?” he demanded. “Don’t you know that’s not safe on a building site?”

  “I ken, Mr Logan,” the hapless labourer said, “bit I dinna get paid till Friday and I canna afford tae hae the beets repaired or buy a new pair.”

  Willie reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the most monstrous bundle of £20 notes, all kept together by an elastic band, that the young labourer had seen. The lad’s eyes widened and smile brightened – but not for long.

  “Here,” Willie said to him, and he pulled off the elastic band and handed it over. “That’ll stop the flapping until Friday.”

  THE LATE David Welch, Director of Links and Parks in Aberdeen, was the man widely credited with Aberdeen’s record number of wins in the annual “Britain in Bloom” competition. He was also a fine and witty after-dinner speaker, and a man with a kindly touch as far as the city was concerned.

  David was touring one of the city parks one day and came across one of the older corporation gardeners, who was immensely proud of the grass that he looked after. He was so proud that he had erected home-made signs warning visitors that they should not sit, stand or walk on such lush pasture.

  When David asked who had put the signs there, the gardener said defiantly that he had. David looked round at the children playing in the park, in the way that public parks are meant to be used by the public, and said gently to his employee: “I don’t think it’ll work.”

  “Fit wye nae?”

  David pointed out two small boys playing Cowboys and Indians. “Because,” he said, “an Indian being chased for his life by a cowboy hasn’t the time to stop and look at your signs.”

  JOURNALIST ROBERT URQUHART, who came from Buchan and who made his name on The Scotsman, had a sister whose fine singing voice meant that she was in great demand for concerts throughout Aberdeenshire.

  At one such concert in a small Buchan village, Robert’s sister was giving a hand with the washing-up in the hall kitchen when in came Jimmy, who, in the vernacular of the day, “hid a bit o a wint”. In other words, Jimmy wasn’t all there.

  The front door of the little wooden hall was on the road, but the ground dropped away steeply behind to a track with steps leading down to it. After his tea and cakes, Jimmy disappeared outside. Presently, there came several loud thumps and yelps.

  “Mercy,” Robert’s sister said, “what’s that noise?”

  “Ach,” said one of the village women. “Dinna fash. That’ll be Jimmy coontin the steps wi his heid.”

  THE LATE Sandy Mutch, long-time councillor and, latterly, Convener of Grampian Regional Council, used to tell of finding the archetypal absent-minded professor at the world-famous Rowett Research Institute, just outside Aberdeen.

  The scientist had a hand-written badge pinned to his lapel, reading:

  DO NOT GIVE ME A LIFT HOME

  I HAVE THE CAR TODAY

  KINCARDINE READERS will have heard of “Kirkie Davie”, the late David Milne who once farmed Kirktown of Fetteresso and who latterly owned the Mill o Forest Dairy at Stonehaven and rose to be a baillie on the town council.

  Davie’s command of bad language was legendary. One mart Thursday, he was in The Square at Stonehaven with a few cronies when Miss Ramsay, a very prim and proper teacher, passed on her way home for lunch.

  Approaching the group, she remonstrated: “Oh, Mr Milne. That’s terrible language you’re using, and with children passing on their way home from school.”

  Davie turned to his cronies and demanded: “Right. Fitna een o you buggers is sweirin?”

  ON ANOTHER occasion, while Kirkie Davie was sitting on the bench as baillie, a farm servant appeared before him on a charge of being drunk and using obscene language in public.

  Davie fined him 15/- and added: “One thing I winna tolerate is this bliddy bad language.”

  WE’LL STEP up several social gears now for a story involving Queen Victoria (“Yer Mujesty”). The North-east’s most celebrated home-economics expert, Muriel Clark, of Aboyne, remembered, in one of her books, that Victoria liked to visit the Balmoral estate workers, often at short notice and often at mealtimes.

  On one such visit, Victoria was especially taken with the fine smells from the cauldron of Scotch Broth that was bubbling merrily on the black-lead range. She inquired as to the ingredients.

  “Weel, ma’am,” the woman of the house said, “there’s barley intill’t, there’s pizz intill’t, there’s carrots intill’t . . .”

  “Yes, yes, yes,” cried the monarch, “barley, peas and carrots, but where do you get this ‘intill’t’?”

  TWO BROTHERS – let’s call them Davie and Wullie – worked a croft near a small village north of Deeside before the last war, and Davie was partial to a dram on a Saturday night. When lousin time came, Davie would give himself a dicht here and there, then board his ancient BSA motorcycle and hotter his way into the village to weet his thrapple.

  With no breathalysers to impede festivities, Davie would make the most of his night off and, by closing time, was generally past caring. One Saturday night, he had teetered out
to his BSA, fired her up, pointed her in the right direction and set off for home.

  Alas, while attempting to round a sharp bend, Davie went one way and the bike went the other. Three lads following a few minutes later in a car chanced upon the scene, and while one went to haul the BSA out of the ditch, another went to dust down Davie and be sure that he was none the worse for his mischanter.

  As the rescuer got Davie on his feet and was brushing him down, he exclaimed: “Michty, Davie, ye’ve rippit a hole in the erse o yer brikks.”

  “No,” Davie said. “I hinna.”

  Yet the flapping material and large aperture was there for all to see. “I wyte ye hiv,” said the rescuer. “There ye go: a great muckle hole. See?”

  “No, I hinna,” Davie said, swaying gently. “They’re Wullie’s brikks.”

  TO INVERBERVIE in the early 1930s now, and Edward Milne, an employee of the North of Scotland Bank in the town has just got married.

  James Gibb, of Hallgreen Castle, on his first subsequent visit to the bank made no comment on Edward’s recent nuptials, but then, as he was about to leave, turned and said: “Aye, Mr Milne, yer penny pies’ll cost ye tippence noo.”

  STILL AT Inverbervie, older Kincardine residents will remember William Lyon, the businessman and town provost. One day in the bank, one of his contemporaries, a not-so-successful businessman, came in.

  They got into conversation, when the poorer of the two said: “Aye, Mr Lyon, bit money’s nae aathing.”

  “Maybe no,” Mr Lyon replied, “bit a poun in yer pooch is affa handy fin ye wint tae rin an eeran.”

  The Toon

  What would life in North-east Scotland be without the friendly rivalry between city and country, Teuchter and Toonser? Although we’re both proud sons of the country, we still think that the Granite City deserves a chapter of its own.

  A PARTY of English visitors was installed at the Prince of Wales hostelry and public house in the centre of Aberdeen when the subject got round to the supposed meanness of Aberdonians.

  One who fancied himself as a bit of a wag leaned over to local man Ackie Sangster at the next table and said: “Do you know the difference between an Aberdonian and a coconut?’

  “No,” Ackie said.

  “You can get a drink out of a coconut,” the wag said, to roars of laughter from his compatriots.

  Ackie had the good grace to manage a smile and, when the laughter had died down, made to dip into his pocket for change: “Wid you lads like a drink then?” he said.

  “That’s very decent of you,” said the Englishman. “We could all do with a drink, thank you.”

  “Fine,” Ackie said. “Awa and buy a coconut.”

  TO APPRECIATE the next tale, you have to understand, as all self-respecting Aberdonians have done for decades, that Aitken’s Bakery is one of the prime purveyors of North-east patisserie and boulangerie.

  Taxi-driver Norman Duncan found himself in a soirée in one of Aberdeen’s pubs when the topic of conversation got round to dieting. Mr Duncan, who wishes it to be known that he is actually a very healthy eater, kept his counsel as his companions explored the various merits of the grapefruit diet, the vitamin B diet and seemingly every other faddy diet humankind had invented.

  “Fit aboot you, Nommie?” one of his chums asked presently. “Are you an Atkins Diet man?”

  “No,” Nommie said. “I’m mair the Aitken’s Diet.”

  “Aitken’s Diet?” said the group.

  “Aye,” Nommie said. “Ivry mornin, four rowies and half a dizzen cream buns.”

  IN A SIMILAR vein, one Aberdeen secretary wrote to tell us that her boss’s idea of a balanced diet was a pint in each hand.

  BUS-DRIVER Ian Anderson was on duty the day that Aberdeen introduced the exact-change system on its corporation fleet. Ian stopped near Holburn Junction, where one of his regular clients, an older woman from Great Western Road, handed him a pound note.

  “Sorry,” Ian said. “Exact change only.”

  “Laddie,” said the woman, “I’ll gie ye exact change fin you tak me exactly far I’m wintin tae ging.”

  THE GRAMPIAN Industrialist of the Year crown for 2001 was bestowed on Alasdair Locke, of the Abbot Group, a successful concern which has fingers in many energy-related pies, but is noted particularly as a leading maker of alternative-energy generating equipment.

  “I’m mair the Aitken’s Diet”

  Perhaps that explains Alasdair being hailed by the awards-dinner MC as: “Our winner for 2001, Alasdair Locke, the second-biggest generator of wind in the UK.”

  PRIDE IN your Aberdonian heritage starts young. Helen Fraser, of Cults, bade farewell to her five-year-old grandson when he and his family left to start a new life in North Uist. His first taste of school involved the teacher asking him and his classmates to take a piece of paper each and write the digit “1” several times.

  Task completed, they queued up to show teacher their handiwork. While waiting patiently, our exiled Aberdonian noticed, with mounting alarm, that almost all of the 1s that the other children had drawn were different from his.

  While he had crafted digits with a slope and a little serif line at the bottom, on which each 1 stood, his new classmates had all drawn simply a series of short vertical lines.

  When he reached the front of the queue, he handed his teacher the paper and, before she had time to say anything, announced: “These are Aberdeen ones. And, anyway, I’m brand new around here.”

  BACK IN 1987, NorthSound Radio in Aberdeen ran a summer series aiming to put people back in touch with long-lost relatives and friends. To kick off the series, the station aired a studio discussion and phone-in, intending to trawl over successful stories, and hoping to dig up a few touching tales of reunion or loss at the same time.

  When the presenter asked listeners for their tips on how best to go about locating long-lost Northeast family members, 17 callers phoned to advise: “Say you’ve won the Lottery.”

  DRAUGHTSMAN ANDY McKIM was going through security at Aberdeen Airport when the man in front of him was hauled out of the line for a random search. The chap wasn’t best pleased and took it as a great personal affront.

  As the security officer patted him down and ran the metal-detector over him, the man was almost beside himself with frustration, resentment and fury. The security man soon picked up this wee atmosphere that was building and said: “It’s all right, sir. Please be patient. It’s a random check. Just the luck of the draw.”

  “Just the luck of the draw?!” spluttered the man. “Just the luck of the draw?! In that case, come and fill out my !@£$%! Lottery ticket on Saturday!”

  RECRUITMENT CONSULTANT Jim Petrie specialises in finding executive personnel for the oil industry. One question on his application form is: “In which areas of the world would you NOT be prepared to work?”

  One applicant filled in: “Libya and Glasgow. (Libya negotiable.)”

  IS THERE anyone as bitchy as someone who has fallen out with a neighbour? Ethel Baird, of Kincorth, Aberdeen, recalls having to live between two feuding neighbours during the Sixties. They had once been the best of pals, but had fallen out over something trivial, and went to their graves still not having made up.

  “The exchange I remember,” Ethel wrote, “Was when the neighbour on my left made a great show of striding down her garden path one summer evening, heading for a taxi and, presumably, a night on the town. She liked to dress up for an evening out and was prone to very elaborate hairdos.

  “The other neighbour was visiting me at the time and we were both standing at the window watching from behind the net screens, which the dressed-up neighbour must have known perfectly well or she wouldn’t have been putting on such a show.

  “Anyway, by way of conversation, I noted the very elaborate hairdo and said: ‘Some time I’ll hae tae ask her foo lang it taks tae dee her hair.’”

  The foe replied: “She disna ken, Ethel. She’s nivver there.”

  IF YOU don’t have a good comm
and of the Doric, this next tale will mean nothing to you, but it tickles the rest of us. Indeed, the struggle non-Doric speakers have in appreciating that the dialect isn’t just slang English is illustrated well by this tale from Cults, Aberdeen, where an English family arrived at the height of the oil boom, only to discover that their new granite villa had an infestation of wasps, or some such, in the roof space.

  One of the woman’s new neighbours gave her the name of an old country gent from the Bieldside area who was reputed to have a way with pest control. He listened patiently to the symptoms and then demanded: “Hiv ye a bike?”

  “Pardon?” she said.

  “Hiv ye a bike?” he repeated.

  “Well, yes,” she said, “though it hasn’t been used for years and I think the tyres are flat.”

  WHEN IAN ANDERSON was a young accountant in Aberdeen, he was dispatched for a week every quarter to do business out of a hotel room in Lerwick. This involved travelling on the Shetland ferry, which, as regular users will know, has always been liable to rough seas.

  Ian was the worse for one such trip and, sitting beside an elderly chap out on the deck and holding his heaving stomach, noted that the man appeared to be unperturbed by the rough weather. “What’s the best thing for seasickness?” Ian asked.

  “Whisky,” the man said.

  “Dis that stop it?” Ian asked.

  “No,” the man said, “bit ye taste it gaun doon and ye get tae taste it comin back up again.”

  TWO PENSIONERS who were leaving Aberdeen Airport after returning home from holiday bumped into an acquaintance who was waiting to collect someone from another flight. Our source, one of the airport policemen, told us the ensuing conversation went as follows:

  “Hiv ye been awa?”

  “Aye, Fuerteventura.”

  “Fuerteventura? Far’s that?”

  “Dinna ken. We jist got aff the plane and there it wis.”