A Dash O Doric Read online

  SHORTLY AFTER a circus had visited the Links in the summer of 1934, the minister at nearby St Clements Church discovered that a dead donkey had been laid at the back door of his church; apparently this was a custom among travelling folk of the time to ensure that their animals were given a Christian send-off.

  The minister phoned the Town House to arrange to have the animal taken away, but the clerk, either assuming it was a joke or being genuinely unhelpful, said: “I’m sorry, but I thought it was the duty of ministers to bury the dead.”

  “It is,” said the minister, “but I thought I’d better inform the next of kin first.”

  ONE OF the most celebrated characters in Aberdeen between the wars was “Sojer”, a man whom life had treated rather harshly, who had no fixed abode, and who spent his days marching up and down Union Street, King Street and round the Castlegate and the harbour as if he was on a parade ground.

  Most of the shopkeepers kept a kindly eye out for “Sojer”, and, one winter, when it became clear that he was suffering badly with a hacking cough, called out a doctor to attend to him.

  The doctor offered the treatment free of charge: a bottle of pills with the instruction to take one three times a day after meals.

  “Very good, sir,” said “Sojer”, saluting. “And far div I get the meals?”

  The Papers

  Journalism is a source of robust humour, especially the local press that publishes and sells throughout northern Scotland. Here are some of the cleaner tales that we were told.

  WHEN ANNIE ROSS was a young woman-abouttown in Aberdeen before moving to Derbyshire, she would often find herself bustling up Union Street, at busy times, where the newspaper vendors would be in full song.

  On one particularly busy afternoon, she found her attention attracted by the billboards on all sides of a vendor’s box, so she slowed as she passed.

  “Evenin Express!” called the vendor at full volume. “City la-test!”

  Annie’s attention was now caught by the bill, so she began squinting at the copies of the paper laid on top of the vendor’s box to see if she could glean a few more details.

  “Evenin Express!” cried the vendor. “City latesssssst!”

  She took a step forward and kinked her head round so she wouldn’t be reading upside down, and that was when she heard the vendor shout:

  “Evenin Express! Hire-purchase terms are available!”

  WHEN JIM DOLAN was chief football writer on The Press and Journal, he was obliged to travel round the country attending Premier League matches, to follow Scottish teams on their European ventures, and to cover the Scotland team in internationals.

  “Hire-purchase terms are available!”

  On one such occasion in the Central Belt, Jim found himself in the back of a cab, and the chatty cabbie asked him what was his line of work. Jim explained.

  “Really?” said the cabbie, fascinated. “I wis a fitba player masel in ma young day.”

  “Is that so?” Jim said. “Who did you play for?”

  “Cowdenbeath. Then I wis transferred tae East Stirlin. And ye ken how much ma transfer fee wis?”

  “No.”

  “Nithin.”

  There was a silence in the cab for a few moments, then the cabbie added: “And that wis a lotta money in them days.”

  THE LOCAL-GOVERNMENT correspondent of The Press and Journal throughout the 1970s and 1980s was Gordon Mackay, who used to tell of one his colleagues being out golfing one morning and slicing his ball into the rough. Being an Aberdonian, the colleague spent a good half-hour searching for it, unaware that his every move was being watched by an old woman.

  Eventually, he spotted her and she beckoned him over.

  “I’ve been watchin ye lookin for yer ba,” she said. “I didna wint tae bother ye, bit wid it be cheatin if I telt ye far it is?”

  RON KNOX, former Assistant Editor of The Press and Journal, was attending a professional dinner at the Beach Ballroom, Aberdeen, in the early 1990s when he spotted the maitre d’hotel, sporting a clipboard and a concerned look, walking round the tables.

  He leaned down to whisper to a woman seated two places away from Ron. “Excuse me, madam. Are you a vegan?”

  “No,” she said. “Aquarius.”

  IT’S NOT just the red-top tabloids that can create clever wordplay in their headlines. The Press and Journal ran a tale in 1983 about a Glasgow tour operator who fleeced thousands of customers with promises of cut-price safaris and cruises, then scarpered with the deposits.

  The Press and Journal heading was: Tour Allure a Lie.

  BACK IN the days when the North Sea oil industry was a hive of activity and young businesses were making huge fortunes, The Press and Journal carried a recruitment advertisement from a contract cleaning company looking desperately for a manager.

  In case prospective applicants were being put off by the worry that they would be expected to don the Marigolds and wield the Vim themselves, the ad-agency copy included the reassuring line that the “successful applicant would be mainly managing the business and not cleaning himself”.

  THE UNCLE of one of our contacts was an insurance agent in Aberdeen and used to collect premiums by going door-to-door in the evenings. At one such home, the man of the house opened the door.

  Once inside, the insurance agent, somewhat tired, it must be said, inquired: “And how’s your wife keeping? Is she still? . . .”

  Something in the householder’s reaction made the insurance man pause, prompting our man to recall that the wife’s death notice had appeared in the columns of The Press and Journal a few weeks previously.

  Anxious to make amends without being clumsy, he made the mistake of ploughing on: “Is she still . . . dead?”

  WHEN RUSSELL REID retired as Editor of The Sunday Post in 2001, he regaled colleagues with tales from his 44 years in journalism, including an experience sitting on the press bench during a case at Arbroath Burgh Court in the late 1950s.

  The chairman of the bench was one of the town bakers, and the case involved a woman who had just been found guilty of some misdemeanour or other.

  The baker leaned imperiously towards the dock and said: “Has the accused anything to say before I pass sentence?”

  The wifie squared her jaw and said: “Aye. Stop ma rolls.”

  FORMER WRITER and sub-editor for the Evening Express Joan Elrick moved later to Upper Deeside and heard the legend of a commercial traveller visiting the area and needing to find a particular crofter somewhere between Braemar and Ballater.

  Having located the croft in question, he found that the man of the house was not in; it was the man’s wife who came to the door.

  “Aye, he’s aboot somewye,” she advised the traveller. “He’s likely doon seein tae the pigs. Awa doon ye go. Ye’ll easy ken him. He’s weerin a hat.”

  THE PRESSURE of turning out a daily paper is the only excuse for the following famous blooper from The Press and Journal in the early 1970s. The feature told of a Banchory teenager landing a plum summer job with the London Symphony Orchestra. The feature explained:

  “It is Noreen’s job to check over the musicians’ parts before each performance.”

  NOW FOR a classified advertisement from the Evening Express in the early 1980s, which we suspect was placed as a joke:

  FOR SALE

  Pure-bred Doberman guard dog.

  Guaranteed fierce.

  Contact the Trauma Unit

  Dr Gray’s Hospital, Elgin.

  AND HERE’S one from the Turriff Advertiser in the mid-1970s, when a drapery store in the town was advertising a clearance sale of old stock that had been in storage in the loft for so long that most of the items would have needed a wash and an airing before they could be worn.

  Part of the consignment was a range of outdated men’s underwear, which perhaps explained the following line in the advertisement:

  MEN’S LONG JOHNS (SLIGHTLY SOILED)

  No word as to how sales went.

  THE AGRICUL
TURAL EDITOR of The Press and Journal, Joe Watson, remembers a well-known North-east farmer buying a substantial acreage in Estonia, shortly after that country devolved from the USSR in the 1990s. Keen students of farming will know that the rich Baltic farmland was going for virtual pennies an acre, and was too good a prospect for UK farmers to ignore.

  Wanting a new manager for his new place, the farmer did the obvious thing and advertised in The Press and Journal. He had many replies, but the strangest of all was a phone call from a Keith direction.

  “Fit exactly is there on this fairm?” inquired the applicant.

  The farmer told him of the many acres of arable ground, the large dairy herd, the seed-potato speciality and the small piggery. There was also a considerable number of staff who would need quite a bit of management to be brought up to Western standards of farm practice.

  “Maist fairm loons need ‘at,” observed the Keith caller. “Now, far aboot did ye say this place wis again?”

  “Estonia.”

  “Estonia? Is that near Methlick?”

  FANS OF “Francie and Josie” will know that the late Jack Milroy, who played “Francie” to Rikki Fulton’s “Josie”, was one of those rare people in Scottish variety theatre who had a healthy sense of his place in the world. Unlike many of his variety contemporaries, Jack never believed his own publicity and always had time for people.

  When he turned up at His Majesty’s Theatre, Aberdeen, for a gala evening to celebrate the theatre’s refurbishment, a reporter from The Press and Journal inquired if he was still as busy as ever.

  “Still just as busy, son,” Jack said. “You know that Rikki’s written his autobiography. Well, I’ve started writing mine.”

  “And when will it be out?” said the P&J man.

  “Don’t know. I’m up to page 14 and I’ve only covered the family moving four streets from one house to the other when I was two year aul.”

  “That’s an awful lot of pages to cover one flitting,” the P&J man joked.

  “I know, son,” Jack said, “but the traffic wis terrible.”

  IN THE late 1980s, The Press and Journal hired a freelance journalist from Ireland with the lovely Gaelic first name Grainne (pronounced Gronya).

  Her first outing to a press conference proved too much of a challenge for North-east security operatives, however. Grainne returned to the office explaining that she had been late for the start of the conference because she was delayed by the following exchange with a security man who had difficulty spelling.

  “Fit’s yer first name?”

  “Grainne.”

  “Spell it.”

  “G-R-A-I-N-N-E.”

  “Greenie?”

  “Not Greenie. Grainne.”

  “G-R-E? . . .”

  “G-R-A-I-N-N-E.”

  “Groany?”

  “Grainne.”

  “Ach,” he said, waving her through. “I’ll jist ca ye Darlin.”

  THE ABERDEEN JOURNALS Inverness office staff tell of a crew from Sky TV arriving in Inverness on one of their periodic visits to check Highland reactions to various news stories. The crew spotted a likely interviewee in Academy Street, so the reporter approached and said: “Excuse me, have you got a few words for Sky TV?”

  “I have,” snapped the man. “Stick your microphone up your own nose and bugger off back to Portree.”

  Aches and Pains

  Some of the best humour comes when the guard is down. Doctors and nurses are usually the best witnesses on such occasions.

  ONE OF Aberdeenshire’s most celebrated chemists before World War II was Alexander Sim Weir, who dispensed pills and potions at Kemnay and was known throughout mid-Donside as “Aul Phizz”. His contemporaries were Jim Stephen, the postmaster, and Miss Burnett, a very prim and proper old lady.

  Miss Burnett was exceptionally fond of her pet Scottie, although she resented the 7/6d that the annual dog licence cost. She appeared at Jim Stephen’s post office one afternoon and asked for her licence. When she was told the price, she remarked: “An awful lot for such a small dog.”

  Unimpressed, Jim returned: “If ye wint onythin chaeper, ging doon tae ‘Aul Phizz’ for tippence o pooshin.”

  RETIRED LORRY driver Bill Duncan, of Aberlour, had been warned by his doctor that he would have to moderate his diet and step up the exercise, because a lifetime of sitting behind the wheel had made him a prime candidate for a heart attack.

  “Fit exercise wid ye be thinkin o?” he inquired of the doctor.

  “Walking, swimming, anything that gets you active,” the medical man said. “You’re also very weak in your upper arms, so I suggest you take two five-pound tattie bags every morning, one in each hand, and stretch out your arms until they’re pointing straight out from your body. Hold them there for five seconds, then let them down slowly. Repeat that five times every morning for a fortnight, then move on to ten-pound tattie bags and do that for another fortnight. Then come back and see me.”

  When the month was over, Bill returned to the doctor and pronounced himself feeling grand. The doctor examined him and noticed that there didn’t appear to have been much change in the blood pressure, the waistline, the upper arms or anything else.

  “Have you been lifting the tattie bags like I told you?” he asked.

  “Michty aye,” Bill said. “In fact, I’m deein that weel I’ll maybe pit some tatties in them next wikk.”

  WE WON’T be identifying which village surgery in the North-east hosted the following conversation (for obvious reasons), but our source explained that it involved a chat between two elderly women who thought that their GP fancied himself as a bit of a matinée idol.

  “In fact,” said one, “ivry time he taks a wifie’s pulse, he taks aff 10 beats tae accoont for her bein sae excited.”

  NORTH-EAST hospitals are now reporting the discovery of a new Class A drug exclusive to Aberdeen.

  Kenfitamine.

  Kenfitamine: a new Class A drug exclusive to Aberdeen

  AULD JIMMY had spent most of his life in the North-east as a farm labourer. Living on his own, he avoided most of the comforts of modern living but, eventually, he needed to be taken into residential care, where he maintained some of his old habits.

  His major pastime was to clap his bunnet on his head, pull on his beets and go for a walk in the grounds. One day, while he was out for a walk, his neighbour in the adjoining room had a 14-inch black-and-white TV set installed in his room.

  Jimmy returned just as the nurse, David Sharp (who sent us the tale and is now living in Ohio), was explaining the controls to the TV’s new owner.

  “Come and tak a look at this, Jimmy,” David said, and, as Jimmy stood wide-eyed, David flipped through the three channels to demonstrate how the set worked. For someone who hadn’t had mains water or electricity for most of his life, Jimmy found this almost supernatural.

  “Michty,” he said. “What a machine. Dis it work aff the gas?”

  A BANFFSHIRE farmer turned up at the Aberchirder doctor one day and dropped his dungars to reveal an angry red weal in the shape of a hoofprint on his backside. “I wis kickit,” he explained.

  In the course of the treatment, the GP asked if the farmer had had many such experiences, and the old boy said he hadn’t had any at all in a lifetime’s farming.

  After a pause, he recounted tales of being flattened by a ram, tossed over fences by bulls and having his leg broken by an angry billy goat.

  “Wouldn’t you call those accidents?” said the doctor.

  “Na,” said the farmer. “I think they meant it.”

  A WRI member from Buchan told us she was once at a talk given by the local GP. He spoke about developments in medicine and then invited questions from the floor.

  The first question, prepared in advance in case the ladies were too shy to start themselves, came from the institute president. “Does the doctor think there is any truth in the old saying that an apple a day keeps the doctor away?”

  The doctor cleared h
is throat to answer, but was beaten by a shout from the back of the hall: “Only if yer aim’s good.”

  NOT QUITE a doctoring story, this one, but it’s close enough. A vet’s nurse from the Banffshire coast (that’s close enough) told us that an ability to act was essential for vets who had to deal with children who were deeply upset by the loss of their pets.

  One of her employers managed to seem wholly sympathetic while the owners were in the room, but the mood changed as soon as the child or children left.

  One day, a hamster that was decidedly past its best was pronounced DOA and the child was dispatched to the arms of her waiting mum.

  When the door shut, the vet said: “They’d be as well taking a disposable lighter in for a service.”

  MEDICAL SECRETARY Isabel Falconer wrote to tell us of her father-in-law, who had no time for doctors and was proud of never having needed medical attention in more than 70 years.

  A cough that had persisted for months saw Isabel and her husband drag the thrawn old boy to the GP, who diagnosed something bronchial and prescribed a mixture.

  Isabel arranged to deliver the script to the town chemist and collect the mixture herself, despite the patient’s insistence that he was perfectly capable of collecting his own medicine. She suspected that he would throw away the prescription when he thought no one was looking. She returned with the medicine and stayed to watch him take the first dose.

  By Hogmanay, the cough was no better, so Isabel asked him if he had been taking his mixture.

  “I’ve been deein exactly fit it says on the label,” he said, folding his arms.

  The label read: Keep Tightly Closed.

  LONG AGO, medical services in the North-east were somewhat patchy. For a long time, the only trained doctor between Aberdeen and Huntly was Dr James Milne, of Inverurie.

  Although doctors were few and far between, many of the parish ministers and some of the lairds kept stocks of medicines for curing and relieving parishioners. Here and there, too, there were other skeely men and women who were reputed to have a rudimentary knowledge of medicine.