Magic Minute An Odd Angry Scot
MAGIC MINUTE // “Hey, Mum! An angry Scotsman smashed Laurie’s new fishing rod over his knee because we got our line tangled with his off the pier!”
(I later learned my two brothers had broken it in half, hitting a fence while swatting butterflies!)
But at the time I was so upset to hear this from my sick bed, causing my impetuous mom to dash off a letter to the Herald son about the injustice of it all.
But the newspaper thought it had happened to 8-year-old me! So I had to live this lie in front of the reporters’ cameras and probing questions.
“What did this Scotsman look like?” they asked me.
My mind was racing. “Well, he wore a beret and a tartan jacket.”
A forlorn picture of me and my broken rod soon featured on page two of the Sun under the heading: ‘Scotsman’s Ill-will Towards Young Fisher.’
But even worse, a livid Irishman stormed into the Herald Sun with a new fishing rod for ‘the poor little fella’, saying, “This is typical of the dour Scots.”
I spent the next week fending off sensitive questions.
And the slighted Scots? “Just a media storm in a teacup,” as my old friend Sandy would say.
I’m Laurie Smale… Till my next Magic Minute. 🪄
