“What do you expect us to do about that?” the desk sergeant said.
“I’m nae expectin ye tae dee onythin aboot it,” the pensioner said. “I jist wintit tae tell somebody.”
A HUNTLY man went to his doctor complaining of feeling sore all over. Every time he pressed his chest, it hurt. Every time he pressed his side, it hurt. Every time he pressed his neck, it hurt.
The doctor examined him and said: “You’ve broken your finger.”
WE WERE both assured that at the height of the Tupperware craze in the North-east, one enterprising saleswoman promised that the next catalogue would contain Tupperware underwear. With her customers’ curiosity piqued, she would add: “It disna dee muckle for yer shape, but it keeps fit ye’ve got fine and fresh.”
THE LATE Sandy Benzie used to tell a story of a simple Deeside lad who attended the Aboyne Games every year because he liked the sideshows and amusements. On one such outing, he tried his hand at the shooting gallery and won himself a tortoise. Off he went to the beer tent to celebrate.
Emboldened by John Barleycorn, he returned to the shooting gallery an hour or two later and announced to the attendant: “See’s anither go o yer sheetin, bit I’m nae sikkin nae mair o yer pies. The last een wis fine an sappy inside, bit it hid a maist damnable hard crust.”
TO THE old Fine Fare supermarket at Bridge of Dee now, when Wullie and Erchie’s trolleys collide. “Sorry aboot ’at,” says Wullie. “I wisna lookin far I wis gaun. I’ve lost ma wife.”
“That’s a coincidence,” says Erchie. “I’ve lost mine an aa and I’m getting a bittie desperate, for she gets terrible ratty if she thinks I’m nae keepin up wi her.”
“Well,” Wullie says, “maybe I’ve seen her. Fit dis she look like?”
“Well, she’s 24, lang blonde hair, blue een, mini skirt, and leather beets up til her backside,” says Erchie. “Fit dis yours look like?”
“Nivver mind,” Wullie says. “We’ll look for yours.”
BACK IN the 1960s, an elderly Aberdeen couple were moved out of their tenement in George Street and rehoused in the new council tower-block flats at Cairncry.
One evening, the woman gave her man his tea then left the flat without saying where she was going.
She returned the following morning. Her man was speechless and she was near breathless herself.
“Thank God,” she said. “That’s my day for the stairs past.”
THE STORY goes that when the Queen visited Aberdeen in 1964 as a signal to the world that the infamous typhoid epidemic was over and that the city was now perfectly safe, one of her stops included a visit to the Prosthetics Department at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, where artificial limbs were being sculpted.
Her Majesty paused by one busy workman and inquired: “What exactly are you making here?”
He looked up. “Aboot 15 bob an oor.”
YOU CAN send your complaints and groans to Ian Murray, of Macduff, who tried to tell us that he went into the Chinese supermarket in George Street, Aberdeen, and asked for canned pigeon.
“Sorry,” said the assistant. “No can doo.”
A KINTORE woman was lying on her deathbed. “Wullie,” she said to her man, “I’ve ae last request. I ken ye’ve nivver likit ma sister, but jist for the look o the thing wid ye let her sit aside ye in the front car on the wye tae the ceemetry. Efter aa, she’s ma only faimly.”
“Weel,” Wullie said, “Aaricht. Seein it’s yer last request, I’ll agree. Mind, it’ll spile ma hale day.”
THE name o Cocky Hunter, Aberdeen’s legendary merchant, needs little introduction, but the story goes that perhaps some of his customers were not quite so aware of how good an eye Cocky had for a genuine antique.
A chap bowled up on a push-bike at the premises, wanting to see if Cocky was interested in what was supposedly a Van Gogh he had found in an outhouse.
Cocky called upstairs: “Wullie, foo mony Van Goghs hiv we got up there?”
“Five,” came a voice.
“Twa poun for’t.” Cocky told the man, who accepted with very bad grace.
A few months later, the would-be art dealer turned up on his push-bike again, this time with a supposed Constable.
“Wullie,” Cocky cried upstairs. “Foo mony Constables hiv we got up there?”
“Sivven,” came the voice.
“Thirty bob,” Cocky said. Again, the man grumbled, but took the cash.
A few months later, he turned up again with a small wooden sphere. “Fit’s that?” Cocky inquired.
“It’s a testicle aff the widden horse o Troy,” the man said. “And afore ye speir at Wullie up there, I’ve got the ither een in ma pooch.”
A NOTE from Inverurie told of a retired Garioch farmer who shuffled into the medical practice complaining that his love life was not what it had been. The doctor prescribed Viagra and asked the old boy to come back in two weeks.
A fortnight later, the consulting-room door opened and there stood the patient with a broad smile on his face and a spring in his step. He pirouetted in and sat down.
“Weel,” said the doctor, “There’s no need to ask how you’re getting on. I can see for myself. It’s written all over your face. Tell me, what does your wife think?”
“Couldna tell ye. Hinna been hame yet.”
ALSO AT Inverurie was the man who offered a conversation lozenge to his mother, only for her to find that there was no writing on it.
When she brought this to his attention, he replied that he had scraped off the message deliberately as he wasn’t speaking to her.
A SPINSTER went to her solicitor to make her will. She wanted half left to the Kirk and half to the man who could show her what she had been missing all these years.
“And who might the man be?” inquired the solicitor.
“I wis thinkin you,” the spinster said.
“Mercy, but I’m a married man,” the solicitor said. “And I’ve got family.”
“Jist you awa hame and think aboot it. Discuss it wi yer wife.”
Initially, his wife was having none of it, but she reasoned by morning that the money would come in handy, provided it was just the once and he was home by midnight.
Well, midnight came, then 1am, then 2am, 3am and 4am. By the time her man arrived home from his wee dalliance, she was furious.
“Now, now, Jean,” he cautioned. “Haud yer tongue. The Kirk’s nae gettin a penny.”
THE TALE that came closest to appearing in a chapter of true stories was this one from Mintlaw, but ultimately we decided to play safe and place it here. The story goes that an elderly chap was making a call to the operator at the phone box in the middle of the town.
The operator said she wasn’t able to help at that moment, but if the caller was able to hang around in the box for a moment or two, she would do what she could to find him an answer and call him straight back.
As our caller hung up, another man appeared outside the box, clearly in a hurry. The original caller stepped outside and offered to let the other man use the phone if he was going to be quick. The second man accepted graciously and stepped inside the newly vacated phone box. Just as he was poised to make his call, however, the phone rang. Puzzled, he lifted the receiver.
“Hello,” the operator said, “Are you the gentleman I was speaking to earlier?”
“Na,” said the man. “I doot ye’ve got a wrang number.”
“I don’t think so,” the operator said. “The call was definitely made from that number. Could the caller be standing outside, maybe?”
The man looked round and spied the first chap. “Hing on a mintie,” said the man in the phone box. “I think I can maybe help ye. Wis he weerin broon sheen and a tweed jaicket?”
PERHAPS THE most implausible story that came our way was from Bill Robertson, of Newtonhill, who insisted a little too earnestly that it was true.
Shortly before he retired from what he described as “a humdrum career among lowlifes in the law”, which we assume meant the people
he apprehended rather than his colleagues in blue, Bill was hosting a charity trip to Edinburgh Zoo.
He spotted an elderly gentleman tossing £10 notes into the chimps’ enclosure. When Bill asked what he thought he was doing, the man pointed at a nearby sign:
DO NOT FEED THESE ANIMALS BANANAS.
£10 FINE.
AND FINALLY, the joke that came at us from so many directions and from so many people that it deserves to have the honour of closing the book.
(Drum roll)
What do you call a Scotsman wearing Arab headdress, a long white cloak and leading a camel across the Sahara?
Lawrence of Kemnay.
Where Credit’s Due
ONCE AGAIN, we can take hardly any of the credit for the stories you have read in the book. Many have come from our daily activities in newspapers and on the radio, but just as many arrived by post from fowk across the North-east, throughout the rest of the country, aye, and a dozen or so from the far-flung corners of the globe, forbye.
To the best of our knowledge, they are true, apart from those we have flagged up clearly as wee works of fiction that were too good to throw away.
We thank everyone who took the time and trouble to write to us or who stopped us in the street, and especially the ones who said that they liked the first two books. We feel we can at least record these contributions, whether we had the space to use them or not.
If we have missed out anyone in the hurry to get the book ready, we're sorry.
Thanks to: Alison Harper, Esma Shepherd, Helen Hendry, Johnnie Duncan, T. Munro Forsyth, Douglas Schaske, Christine Birnie, Ethel Baird, Doug Hampton, Geordie Stott, the Reverend Jim Scott, Robert Adam, Jimmie Mitchell, Charles Barron, V.B. Taylor, R.P. Nicol, A.J. Harper, Mabel Mutch, James Morrison, Frances Patterson, Duncan Downie, Leslie and Hilda, Kenny Mackie, Donald Manson, Norman Harper Sen., Joan Christie, Ethel Simpson, Lindy Cheyne, Hamish Watt, Leslie Innes, Leslie Wheeler, Nan Sandison, Douglas Mutch, Lilianne Grant Rich, Rena Gaiter, Gordon Milne, Graham Maclennan, Chrissabel Reid, John Stewart, Mary Riddoch, Bob Knowles, Andrew Foster, Bill Connon, Harry Walker, Norman Duncan, Sheila Knox, Isobel and Peter Slater, Douglas Merson, Norah Hardy, Violet Thomson, Yvonne Cormack, Jess Robertson, Donald McAllister, Jim Glennie, J.O. McHardy, Elizabeth Hendry, Bill Mowat, Elma Massie, Ian Dawson, Donnie McBeath, Ronnie Watson, Helen Mills, Bill Pirie, Frances Robb, Janice Cottier, Jim McColl, Mary Gerrie, Eric Wilson, Karen Buchan, Nanny and Hilda, Joe Watson, John Dear, George Durward, David Ross, Eileen Dunn, Sheila Innes, Billy Mathers, Dr Pat Macdonald, Jimmy Irvine, Bill Shand, Kathie Ross, the Reverend Gordon Smith, the Reverend Charles Birnie, Margaret Mathison, Sandy Matheson, Frances Jaffray, Sandy Watt, Lorna Alexander, Jimmy Murdoch, Allan Barnett, Ackie Manson and dozens of others who wrote and requested anonymity, as well as thousands who, over the years, have entertained us with their conversation.
Norman Harper and Robbie Shepherd Aberdeen, 2004
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