I wonder if most of the rest of the UK is having a right good laugh at Aberdeen.
The Silver City looks decidedly tarnished as we suffer a frightening Covid-19 spike.
Anyone who thought our re-lockdown would be lifted on Wednesday is almost as daft at the gypes who started the new outbreak. The figures are chilling.
More confirmed cases in the first half of this month than in the whole of the last two. 272 in Grampian since July 26 177 associated with licensed premises and a further 940 contacts.
Just in the week the kids go back to school. Could there be a worse scenario? Here’s my theory: normally cautious Nicola Sturgeon feared a public backlash if she didn’t agree to pubs re-opening soon after the English ones.
Many hid their doots and have now been proved right. In hindsight, it’s been a disaster for Aberdeen, not just the spread of the virus but for pub and restaurant owners and staff.
Me and my pals were all set to take oor first, cautious steps back into oor social lives with a booking for Miller and Carter on the 17th – strainin’ at the leash to get oor gnashers into the delish steaks, especially at that £10 off. Now we’re locked-oot and locked-doon again, but for how long?
If you listen carefully to our very own disease boffin Prof Hugh Pennington and his obvious concerns for “hot-spots” of spreading like pubs, I’ll wager he’d keep ‘em shut down for a fair pucklie weeks yet. Nicola – please listen to Oor Hughie and not so much to political advisers with an eye on next year’s Holyrood elections.
Re-confined to barracks, I again found masellie settin’ aboot something I’d never done before. I’m a bit OCD about weeds. I go at them like a demon wi’ that Weedol stuffie on patio, paths and driveway.
Once bought the big plunger dispenser but not enough scooshin’ oot (and back breakin’) so I use my red (for poison) watering can and a super-strength mixture. My daily perambulations have revealed a line of long and thick stragglers on the outside bottom edge of my wee front wall. Nae technically mine, but deffo nae bonnie.
I sprang into action. Howked oot the boskers by hand, then filled my red can with the weed-zapper. Funny, barely a trickle comin’ oot the rooser. Washed it, lest it was bunged-up. Still zilch oot the spoot. Had a shuftie doon. A mass of dark brown-ness, obviously dead leaves.
I’d manoeuvre them oot by sticking in my finger and curlin’ them roon. Oh mummy, daddy, fit a fricht. Instead of touchin’ a mossy mass, I hit bone-hard, attached to something soft and scooshy. Maybe even alive… My scraik nearly stopped the passing bussie. Keeked doon the spoot. Gaads.
The biggest snail I’ve ever seen. My flingin’ doon the can could have been better judged. It tumbled, not on to my naisty ootside weeds, but a’ ower one of my bonniest purple plants. Doh, Mo.
What happened to common sense amid exam chaos?
Could there ever have been a swifter or more dramatic turnaround than Education Secretary John Swinney, pictured, restoring the first estimated exam grades to our beleaguered young students?
Many of them have faced heartache and the prospect of future educational chaos as a result of the haphazard downgrading. Who’s to blame? Who knows? How come our national and Scottish governments keep making the most horrendous decisions?
Is there not a soul with any plain common sense or problem-solving ability behind the scenes?
Right royal rumpus as tell-all book tells tales?
It’s just three days since the book claiming to tell the truth about Meghan and Harry’s rift with the royals hit the shops.
They insist they didn’t co-operate with any interviews with the authors of Finding Freedom. We have to believe them, although any sensible cove has to wonder how two fairly unknown journalists came to know the details of a private conversation between our monarch and her grandson. Say no more.
Rightly or wrongly, the book has been hammered by experienced royal-watchers as one long, bitter tirade against the Windsors. Maybe the Sussexes thought this book would garner them new support and affection among the masses. But no one celebrates a couple who think they’re Erchie.
Meanwhile, their exile to the US has taken another turn. Apparently actor Tyler Perry’s sprawling mansion in Beverly Hills wasn’t to Harry’s taste. (Ye don’t say!) Now the couple have lashed oot on a smaller but no less luxurious pad in that so-quiet, so-discreet beachside city of Santa Barbara – also known as the American Riviera.
Sounds perfect for a no-frills, press-dodgin’, home-lovin’ couple keen to make a buck or two on their name.
I wonder what Princess Di is thinking as she looks down on her wee boy.
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