And from Kirsty: "Plus, Granpaw is the scallywag, and whatever Paw does, he always gets found out. They have been going since before WWII, and along with their compadre, Oor Wullie, have given rise to several phrases which have become embedded in the Scottish psyche, not the least of which is "Jings, crivvens, help m'boab!" (An involuntary expression of surprise and shock. Most often employed on finding that PC Murdoch has foiled one's latest cartie exploit. (PC Murdoch = the resident polis in OorWullieland. Cartie = wooden box on wheels much loved by children in Dundee in the first half of the previous century. Presumably.)

"And Kens, fancying Maggie? Very shallow, I'm sorry!! Daphne is obviously the one with hidden depths. You guys..."

Kens: "Yes, but Maggie is a fox. You don't need to have hidden depths when you look that good approaching your 70s."

Check out The Sunday Post for more info.

'When I haver, well I know I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be the man who's haverin' to you.'

They don't write them like that any more."

Marmite is a concentrated yeast paste, enjoyed at any time of the day, whether on toast for breakfast, in sandwiches at lunchtime or as an added ingredient in stews and casseroles, or so goes the marketing bumf.

Personally, I think it's howfin'. Still, some people seem to like it, and it's not that bad for you 'cos it's 100% veggie *and* provides a rich source of vitamin B12, Riboflavin and Niacin and Follic Acid, so I guess it's just the thing to get a craving for with pickled ice-cream when you fall pregnant.

As for the taste - I guess you could call it the working man's caviarre - it's very salty and very definitely acquired. I still haven't cultured my palette, but my mum likes it with cheese on plain bread. Still, it's sold by the bucketload and it helped the allies win the war, so I guess the 'my mate Marmite' ad campaign must have at least a little bit of truth behind it.

"...[smirr and dreich] both pertain to that favourite British topic, the weather. Dreich should really be prefaced with gey, as in 'It's gey dreich the day.' People may have various ideas on this, but in our house it means a really grey, wet, depressing day, where everything is sodden and very gloomy.

Smirr is a very fine light rain, like a spray

"Hmm, tenement. It used to have negative connotations, especially when applied to some of the slum areas of inner cities. The most famous was the Gorbals in Glasgow, but this doesn't mean that Edinburgh was any better, so hold back there Kens! They can now be found in some very douce and expensive areas of town. Basically it's a terrace of three to four levels, with two to four flats (apartments) on each level.

"Long ago a flat was more likely to be 'a room and kitchen' with shared toilets, indoors if lucky, outside if not. I don't really know the date of the decision to demolish these in the town centres, but the famous sense of cameraderie was lost when populations were moved wholesale into high rise blocks. These were meant to operate like a street, but on a vertical axis. However, not having several of the attributes of a horizontal street, they quickly became targets for vandals, and left many people feeling very isolated and housebound.

"Plus, as the song so accurately puts it, 'You cannae throw pieces from a 20 story flat, 50,000 hungry weans'll testify tae that, be it something cheese or jeely, be it plain breid or pan, the odds against it reachin' earth are 99 tae wan.'

"Old habit of throwing a sandwich down to children playing in the back court was also lost. (Piece = sandwich, weans, pronounced waynes, = children, but only on the west coast! jeely = fruit jelly or jam, plain breid = thick white bread with an inedible crust, pan = floppy white bread with all the taste and resilience of a J cloth.)"

"In Weege-speak, a teuchter (pronounced choochter - first 'ch' as in 'cheese' second as in 'loch') is used as a slightly derogatory term to describe a person who comes from the Highlands and Islands - anywhere north of Loch Lomond is probably fair game. It's sort of like calling someone a yokel or a redneck.

As an extension, hoochter-teuchter music is the traditional Scottish country dance music that we all like to birl to as often as we can." (See also hoochter.)