Mitchell’s Diary
Published:
Pool numbers are hot stuff
NOBODY has enjoyed this week’s heatwave more than the Friends of Stonehaven’s open-air pool.
For the first time this season, more than 1,000 people of all ages paid to go through the turnstiles on a single day.
Friends secretary Mary Gardner said yesterday: “Long may this weather continue; it’s brilliant.
“We had 1,046 in during the day on Wednesday and a further 248 for the midnight swim. On Tuesday, we had 871.”
Every little helps for the art deco pool where there are constant demands for cash for maintenance.
Win or lose in Beijing, Olympic swimmer David Carry is to give an exhibition on the pool’s closing day, Sunday, September 7.
Why they were livid at Glenlivet
STILL on the subject of the fine weather, they were livid at Glenlivet this week. After all, it’s not often that the whisky Mecca finds itself almost at the top of hotspots in the UK, as happened on Wednesday.
It hit 27C, or 81F, and duly appeared on a chart on BBC TV’s 6pm news from London.
Alas, the joy was short-lived as the upper Banffshire hamlet appeared as Glenlivit.
There was no such folly on the Scottish news which followed the London bulletin.
It only goes to prove what the rest of the UK feels about London-centric media. Anything north of Wotford is a mystery to them.
Frieda recalls her degree of terror
IN HER time, broadcaster Frieda Morrison has had an AK47 pressed against her forehead in Nicaragua, stood six feet away from a Bengal tiger in India, and been on a plane landing with one engine in Ethiopia. However, nothing prepared her for the terrors of embarking as a mature student on a two-year course at Robert Gordon University Business School. “I’ve seldom been as nervous as my first day at RGU watching the sea of strangers before me,” said Frieda, who covers gardening and environmental matters and lives in a Deeside hideaway near Birse.
She stuck in, however, and was rewarded last weekend when she graduated with an MSc in management. It’s another string to the bow for Frieda, who is also well known for her music and song. Indeed, she has composed a tune, The Path With the Heart, for next year’s clans homecoming and it will be played by the massed pipe bands at the 2009 Aboyne Highland Games.
For fry, read Thai at Ken’s old shop
YOU see them, especially of a Friday, wandering like headless chickens up and down Aberdeen’s Thistle Street looking for a fish shop. These unhappy wanderers drift in a daze past fancy florists and places for posh frocks and posh nosh, only to discover that fishmonger to royalty Ken Watmough really has shut up shop at number 29.
OK, the bearded wonder is still in the business of supplying fish to hotels and restaurants, but his emporium has undergone an extraordinary transformation. Yes, here you will find, not a halibut haven, but an open-view Thai massage centre, Thon Po or Lucky Tree, where your equilibrium can be restored seven days a week. You lie on a mat in special robes and are s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d from top to toe. Within minutes, you have forgotten all about your Friday fry as the masseur, Dien, hits your pressure points and you assure him, no, it didn’t hurt.
Wow, this treatment should be on the NHS.
Poetic licence in Bible stories
HERE’S a child’s view of two Bible stories.
Lot’s wife was a pillar of salt during the day, but a ball of fire during the night.
Samson slayed the Philistines with the axe of the apostles.
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