The latest topical insights from Aberdeen musical sketch comedy team, The Flying Pigs, written by Andrew Brebner and Simon Fogiel.
Tanya Souter, lifestyle correspondent
I da ken about youse, but I wiz a’ confused fan I turned on the TV and seen fit looked like the King getting a’ coronated again. I thocht I wiz in Groundhog Day or I’d gan back in time, or that the last twa months had jist been a particulary boring dream wi’ an uncharacteristic lack o’ fit I usually dream aboot, fit is Tom Hardy in his punts and Wall’s Viennetta.
But it turns oot that nae only diz King Charlie get twa birthdays, he gets twa coronations an’ a’. Weel, actually, this een wisnae the full bhoona. The Edinburgh een’s a “service o’ thanksgiving” – an ancient tradition fit dates back an incredible 70 years.
It’s jist like the een at Westminster Abbey, only better cos it wis cheaper, shorter, and files it didnae hae Katy Perry, it didnae hae Boris Johnson neither.
I wiz pleased tae see the King and Queen trundling doon the Royal Mile in a Rolls-Royce, and nae a golden fairytale carriage. Yon wid hiv been nae use wi a’ that cobbles. If he wis grumpy efter a five-minute wait in London, imagine foo scunnered Charlie wid hae been if he’d hid tae rattle a’ the wye doon the Royal Mile wi’ nae suspension. It’d be like ga’an doon the Spital in a shopping trolley.
The backdrop tae a’ this wis a crowd o’ happy cheering tourists and royalists on one side shouting: “God save the King”, and a load o’ protesters on the ither shouting: “Not my King”. So, for a majestic occasion full o’ pomp and circumstance, it hid a fair bit o’ panto aboot it, did it?
Normally I wid follow a big event like this by watching on the telly files sharing my pithy observations (like: fa wid you pit yer money on tae win in a sword fight, Katherine Grainger or Penny Mordaunt?) on Twitter. But I’m nae ga’an on Twitter nae mair, cos noo ye hiv tae sign up tae use it, and I dinna wint ‘at Elton Musk kenning my personal information.
My youngest tells me that Facebook his jist launched a thing cried Threads tae tak advantage o’ Twitter ga’an clean tae skite, but I hiv banned him from haein it. Kids these days spend ower much time on their phones, and I canna be daein wi’ a’ this cyberbullying.
I wint my kids tae hae the same opportunities I hid fan I wis young. They need come awa fae the internet and get learnt foo tae radge folk up in real life.
Kenny Cordiner, the sports pundit who’s silly mid-on
As my regulatory readers will know, Old Kenny spends the football off season watching all the diddy sports like cycling, tennis and, of course, the croquet. Sometimes that can mean slim chickens for my column, but this week there’s been no shortage of contraverbial moments for me to get my tooths into!
I’ve always found the croquet difficult to understand, but that doesn’t stop me enjoying the sound of feather on pillow. Of course, this is an Ashes summer, so England is sticking the Austrians for the tiniest trophy in world sport. Have you seen it? It looks like the thing you get if you ask for mustard in the Atholl. What is appropriate, seeing as things got a little heated last Sunday.
England was doing their best to stuff the Wobblys, but they was under the cosh when the Ozzy wicket-keeper cheekily knocks over the wicket sticks of batsman Johnny Bristow when he wasn’t not looking.
On the telly, it said he was stumped, and when the vampire says to him, he says: “You’re out”, he certainly looked very perspexed. And, even though it was against the spirit of croquet or something, poor old Bristow had no choice but to walk off with his bat between his legs.
The crowd didn’t not like it and England captain Ben Stokes definitely didn’t not like it even worse, as he showed by smashing the ball around. But he eventually got his jotters and that was that.
Afterwards England-Austria relations could only be described as foosty, and there was a bit of a scene between some England fans and the victorious Austrians in the clubhouse. However, as this was croquet and not football, no one got no coins throwed off their coupons.
Another big difference between croquet and the bountiful game is the refs. In football, when they see some kind of infarction like a handball or a midfield enforcer kicking some cheeky nyaff of a winger up in the air, the refs blow their whistle and send me off. But, in croquet, the men in white coats only give people out if the players ask them a question.
Mind you, I used to ask the whistler all sorts of questions back when I was playing, like: “Are you wise?”, “Have you forgotten your specs?”, or: “Are you wanting a square go after the game, you big neep?!” Happy days.