The latest topical insight from Aberdeen musical sketch comedy team, The Flying Pigs.
Ron Cluny, official council spokesman
As chief spin doctor for a local authority I am occasionally called upon to comment on some pretty weird stuff. And right now, while we face a pandemic, an economic crisis and the prospect of a strike by our own housing officers, I’m dealing with the council’s biggest stooshie about Steps since Provost Margaret Farquhar’s hip-busting moves to Tragedy at the 1998 Christmas do.
So what’s all the fuss about? With storage space at a premium in the city centre itself – what with all the marquees and highly successful parklets all over the shop – some granite slabs from Union Terrace Gardens are gently plonked in the capacious backie of a prominent local businessman.
Well, this is Aiberdeen, where ab’dy kens ab’dy. The fact that a subcontractor felt comfortable dropping several tons of igneous rock into a garden he’d recently worked on just shows the friendly, informal and accommodating character of our fine city.
It’s not like we in the council could have stored great massive lumps of granite ourselves. There’s no room here at Marischal College, it’s now absolutely rammed with all the bobbies from Queen Street. It’s like the Palace Hotel Ballroom from The Blues Brothers round here these days.
No; discreet suburban storage was the obvious solution. As the Senior Council Manager told Councillor Yuill, the granite was being properly handled. It’s just that it was being properly handled five miles to the west of where we thought it was.
So let’s not make a mountain out of a big pile of rocks. After all, Aberdeen has proud tradition of placing civic monuments in temporary safekeeping.
The statue of Queen Victoria now adorning Queen’s Cross roundabout used to stand at the top of St Nicholas Street and was moved when Markies was built in 1964. Legend has it that for three months it was left in Provost Lennox’s backie, after his wife needed somewhere to hang her washing when she bust her whirlie.
Davinia Smythe-Barrett, ordinary mum
I have to say I’m finding this latest delay on lockdown easing simply outrageous. It has ruined our family’s latest holiday plans.
What with all the confusion over the “traffic light” system and which countries were allowed, we’ve only managed three trips abroad so far this year. We were all very much primed for our big summer break, but now we find Sri Lanka is on the “red list”.
Thank goodness we managed to get away to Goa when we did
Poor Emmeline and Fidel who were so looking forward to it. This term has been so trying for them, having to wear masks in school and catch up after all the work they missed during our earlier trips to Brazil, South Africa and our long weekend visiting Milo’s mother in Kent.
Thank goodness we managed to get away to Goa when we did, and that I had the presence of mind to get the children straight back to school again as soon as we returned, or who knows how out of the loop they’d be!
Cava Kenny Cordiner, the football pundit who can boogie-woogie all night long
Just when you thunk there would never again be an excuse to sit and watch five hours of football a day, at long last, Euro 2020 is here and Old Kenny has been in Heaven 17.
Whether it’s classic fixtures like France v Germany, or the more diddy type matches like Ukraine v Northern Macadamia, each game brings excitement, spectacle and a whole host of gambling opportunities.
There’s been high drama, late goals and, in the Denmark v Finland match, a moment that really put everything into a perspex sieve when Christian Eriksen’s life was on the line. Thank goodness he pulled through.
It’s 23 years since Scotland last got turned over in a major tournament, but we didn’t waste no time slipping into old habits against the Cheque Republic. Poor David Marshall looked like a right plum when the lad scored their second goal from about 50 yards.
I feels a bit like Marty McFly, because I is writing this before we take on England on Friday night, but as you is reading it you will already know what will have happened. So, you can apply as deletable: Wasn’t that a turnip for the books against the Auld Enema?/ It was Hound Dog Day all over again.
One thing that catched my eye was the way some of the giants of the game was behaving at press conferences.
Cristiano Ronaldo removed some of the sponsors’ bottles of Coke, before telling us we should drink water instead. Then Uefa started talking about fines after Paul Pogba removed a bottle of non-alcoholic beer. I say fair play to the lad. That stuff is bowff.
