by Ken Smith
A READER back from holiday in America commends an item on the menu in a diner he ate at which he feels would prove popular back here.
He tells us: “Under ‘Extras’ on the menu was an item called ‘My girlfriend is not hungry’. For an extra $3, if you order this item, the kitchen doubles the amount of chips they serve you with your burger and adds three extra onion rings.”
A P.A. named Pamela emails to tell us it’s National Tea Day later this month, whatever that may be. It does, though, remind us of the Kelvin Hall staff member who was explaining to an underling the art of tea-making in an urn. The trick it seems is to put in four tea bags for each gallon of water, so that a four-gallon urn should have 16 tea bags.
“And how do we know when it’s ready?” asked the younger member of staff.
“Simple,” said the older one. “What we do now is go for a fag, and when we are finished, the tea will be ready.”
THE recent shortages of fruit and veg in the supermarkets remind Michael McGeachy of when he was a supermarket manager in Fife and the pineapples were delivered with small sachets of moisture-absorption pellets. The store’s telephonist asked what they were and was told they were pineapple seeds, so she popped one in a pot and put it on the windowsill, where she regularly watered it.
Says Michael: “After a few weeks with nothing growing, I cut the top leaves off a pineapple and placed them into the pot, tips protruding from the soil, and she was so excited. Week by week we ensured the leaves grew bigger. We were rumbled when a visitor knocked over the pot, which fell on to the floor, and a rather sorry-looking pineapple top rolled under her desk. I never knew such a polite lady could know so many swear words.”
THEY are ubiquitous, so it was perhaps inevitable that a Specsavers shop, a Lloyds Pharmacy and a Greggs are next door to each other in Kings Heath High Street in Birmingham.
“Locals are referring to the shops as ‘Specs and drugs and sausage rolls’.”
IT seems a few folk are agitated about the trendy American food store Whole Foods in Giffnock announcing its closure – more than 1,500 people have signed an online petition opposing the shutdown. Pity they didn’t use it a bit more often. Anyway it reminds us of the story, which we listed under apocryphal, summing up the store’s perceived pretentiousness. It was the customer at the Whole Foods checkout who declared: “I need to read the numbers on the barcode out to you – I don’t want any lasers touching my food.”
A READER in Hyndland emails the thought-provoking: “I just want to be rich enough to throw leftovers after dinner straight into the bin rather than putting them in a plastic tub in the fridge for a week and then throwing them out.”
THE news pages report that the men involved in the annual hunt for gugas – young gannets – have received threats that police are investigating. Eating the gugas is not to everyone’s taste. As a reader once told us: “A wizened islander said that once on Mingulay, while looking after sheep, he and his mates tried a guga, or ‘Barra duck’ as it’s known. ‘The guga wasn’t very nice, so we gave it to the dog,’ said the old man in his soft lilting brogue, ‘but he had to lick his backside to get the taste of it out his mouth.’”
OUR cafe stories remind our contact at the Royal Scottish National Orchestra: “Moons ago a string quartet from the RSNO was despatched from Glasgow to promote the orchestra’s forthcoming season. At a break in performances, they stopped for lunch at a hostelry in rural Angus. Having scanned the menu, one of the musicians asked the attentive, though perhaps inexperienced, waitress what the ‘soupe du jour’ was. Endeavouring to find out, the waitress returned triumphantly from the kitchens to declare that it was, in fact, the Soup of the Day.”
MANY of us will have experienced this problem when buying something online from Amazon. Writes a reader: “Dear Amazon, I bought a toilet seat because I needed one. Necessity, not desire. I do not collect them. I am not a toilet seat addict. No matter how temptingly you email me, I'm not going to think, oh go on then, just one more toilet seat, I’ll treat myself.”
TODAY’S piece of whimsy comes from Ian Power who declares: “Studies have shown that food tastes about 40 per cent better if it’s eaten whilst your other hand is holding open the fridge door.”
OUR B&Q story prompts entertainer Andy Cameron to recount the – no, not old, but shall we say ‘classic’ – tale of the wee man trying to buy 250,000 bricks at B&Q. Says Andy: “‘Oh,’ says the lassie, ‘are you building an extension?’ ‘Naw,’ says he, ‘ah’m buildin’ a BBQ.’ ‘You don’t need 250,000 bricks to build a BBQ,’ she says. ‘Ye dae if ye live oan the 34th flerr.’”
14
Keeping It in the Family
Families are the bedrock of our way of life, but they also provide us with some of our funniest moments.
GLASGOW Airport is attempting to reunite owners with their lost teddy bears that have accumulated at the airport. A Glasgow reader tells us that years ago a neighbour gave his young daughter an enormous pink teddy bear for her birthday, but he was not keen on it as it was stuffed with polystyrene spheres that he felt could be a choking hazard.
His solution was to quietly slip it into the bin, hoping the neighbour would not ask about it. His guile, alas, was undone the following week when the bin lorry roared into the street with said pink bear tied to the front grille.
MUCH debate amongst TV watchers about a daughter in her twenties going on The X Factor singing with her mother in a duet. As a young Glasgow woman of a similar age commented: “Imagine going on X Factor with your ma. I cannae go to the shop with my ma without wanting to put her in a headlock.”
BRINGING up teenagers, continued. We hear of a Cambuslang teenager, finally forced into tidying his bedroom, who found so many of his clothes needing washed that he filled six bin bags with them. Not wishing to show his mother the amount, and not knowing how the washing machine worked, he secretly phoned his gran, who said that of course she would wash them. Not wanting his mum to find the bags, he put them outside the front door so that he could later drive over to his gran’s with them. And then a charity collecting clothing donations gratefully picked them up.
MOTHERS of first babies can often be overly careful with their young charges. We notice a young mum confessing on social media: “I’ll forever wish I’d double checked the worrisome red mark on my baby son’s head before rushing him into the doctor’s. The doctor rubbed it off. It was ketchup.”
AND a reader in Partickhill found himself saying to his seven-year-old son, who asked if he could help decorate the Christmas tree: “Of course you can. First we string the lights on it, then we call Mummy through, who tells us how we did it wrong.”
THE perils of new technology. A Hyndland reader tells us she shouted through to her husband in the kitchen to put the nuts she had bought in a ramekin and bring them through.
He was taking his time so she walked into the kitchen, where he was standing in the middle of the floor peering at his mobile phone where he had googled “ramekin”.
SOME truth here, as Kieran Gormley comments: “Ryanair announce flight sales more often than my mam announces she’s the only one who does anything around the house.”
AND today’s piece of daftness comes from a reader who simply emails: “I’m sure wherever my dad is, he’s looking down on me. He’s not dead, just very condescending.”
HAVE you ever seen one of those little round robot vacuum cleaners that you leave to wander by itself around a room? Kenneth Gosnold tells us about his: “My dog doesn’t like the robot vacuum and proceeds to bark at it. Today though the robot vacuum presented the dog with an empty Coke bottle it found under the coffee table. The dog and the robot vacuum are now best friends, with the dog dutifully following it around the house hoping it finds more treats for him.”
EDINBURGH Zoo announced that their famous penguin Sir Nils Olav was 16 years old yesterday. It reminds a reader of the classic yarn of the chap who found a penguin wandering the streets of Edinburgh, and when he asked a passing p
oliceman what he should do with it was told he should take it to Edinburgh Zoo. The next day the police officer spotted him still with the penguin and asked: “I thought you were taking it to the zoo?”
“I did,” he replied. “And today I thought we’d go to the beach at Portobello.”
TODAY’S piece of daftness comes from a Glasgow reader, who phones to tell us: “I built a model of Mount Everest to pass the time. A friend asked me if it was to scale. I told him no, it was just to look at.”
A READER on the Neilston train into Glasgow heard young lads discussing the Facebook controversy about the company selling personal details. “I knew there was something dodgy about Facebook – that’s why I deleted my account five years ago,” one of them said triumphantly. “Naw it wusnae,” said one of his mates. “It was because you took the huff at only getting three friend requests.”
A READER heard a young chap in his local pub tell his pals: “I pulled up the duvet cover on my bed and my hand slipped and I accidentally punched myself in the face. Not to worry though – I’ve had it coming for some time.”
CAT owners will identify with Glasgow comedian and Strictly Come Dancing performer Susan Calman, who passed on a conversation she had: “TV Producer: ‘Do you have any photos of your cats?’ Me: ‘I’m sure I have a couple somewhere. I mean I’m not obsessed or anything.’ TV Producer: ‘Can you email them to me?’ Me: ‘Sure. I’ll try to find some. Might take a while.’ Immediately uploads 7,456 photos. Breaks internet.”
TODAY’S piece of whimsy comes from a reader who emails: “If dogs could text you, they would fill your phone up with constant messages: ‘When you coming home?’ “Where are you?’ ‘Are you nearly home?’ If cats could text you, they wouldn’t.”
A READER sends us a message left on social media by sales manager Joe: “A mate overslept and had to get on a flight within an hour, so he shoved all the clothes on his bed into his suitcase. When he got to the airport he found out he’d packed his cat.”
TOM Phillips reads that the most popular names for male dogs are Alfie, Charlie, Max, Oscar and Buddy and that the most popular names for female cats are Poppy, Bella, Molly, Daisy and Lola. Opines Tom: “It reads like the seating plan for a posh wedding.”
A BEARSDEN reader confesses to us: “I was in the pet shop and spent quite a while reading the contents of their dog food before deciding on which one would be the most nutritional for our new puppy. I then drove off and took the kids to a McDonald’s drive-through.”
MARRIED life can be tricky. A Glasgow reader heard a chap in his local pub explain to his pals: “The dog ran in from the garden with its mucky paws, leaving a trail over the living-room carpet. ‘Do something!’ shouted the wife. Apparently reaching for my mobile phone to take a film of it wasn’t what she had in mind.”
TODAY’S piece of daftness comes from Foz, who declares: “Such a weird day – found a hat full of money in the street. Was also chased by a bloke with a guitar.”
THE good weather has also seen folk besieging garden centres. One reader tells us: “No matter how hard I try looking after plants, feeding them, watering them, I can hardly get anything to grow. Yet a couple of old potatoes discarded in a corner of a garage have bloomed.”
AND for sheer daftness, a reader in Knightswood emails: “I scared the postman today by going to the door naked. I’m not sure what scared him more, my naked body or the fact that I knew where he lived.”
AN AYRSHIRE reader passes on an argument from a chap in his golf clubhouse who declared: “Women claim that childbirth is more painful than being kicked in the goolies, but I don’t think that’s right. I mean, have you ever heard a man a year after receiving such a kick saying he wouldn’t mind you doing it again?”
OUR soldiers’ tales can’t stop the irrepressible Andy Cameron from claiming: “My late grandfather was the piper in the Black Watch and was first out of the trenches when an attack was launched.
“On his first day he was blowing away on his pipes when the bombs, bullets and mortars came flying overhead, prompting a comrade to demand, ‘Andra’, can you no’ play something the Germans like?’”
OH dear, a colleague is eager to speak to me. Eventually I’m forced to look up and he declares: “Dad always said, ‘Never do something that you’ll regret later in life.’ It was superb advice so I got it tattooed on the back of my neck.”
AND a Bearsden reader muses: “I went round to visit my father who has retired and he showed me his new mobile phone, which he has in a protective case which looks strong enough to survive being run over.
“But all I could think about was us growing up as children when Dad was driving the family car and he didn’t even bother to tell us to put on seat belts.”
EVER buy a book online and a few days later the company asks you to review it? Thriller writer Simon Kernick commented at the weekend: “Just received a mental one-star review. It stated, ‘I don’t recall buying or reading this one. The cover doesn’t ring any bells.’”
A GLASGOW reader swears to us that a chap in his local at the weekend was telling his pals: “My sister lost her cat last week.” Says our reader: “One of his pals piped up, ‘Did she put a piece about it on Facebook?’ But the chap replied, ‘I hardly think her cat’s on Facebook.’”
A LANARKSHIRE reader tells us he was at the golden wedding celebrations of an old friend in a local hotel when the couple’s son stood up and made an emotional speech about how much his parents meant to him and ended it with: “Thank you for having such a lovely marriage.”
The man’s father piped up: “And thank you for making it necessary.”
A READER hears a woman in the West End tell her pal: “I can’t believe, nearly 40 and I’ve suddenly got a big spot on my chin. Still, at least I can tell folk I have the body of an 18-year-old.”
MOST dog owners can identify with Josh, who explains: “A character on TV opened a bag of crisps and my dog came running into the living room thinking it was me, so now she’s playing with a ball she found and is acting like that’s what she wanted all along.”
TODAY’S whimsical observation comes from Ian Power, who says: “My girlfriend’s started cooking vegetarian food because she says we’ll have healthier and longer lives. I’m fairly sure she’s right, but I’m not sure whether it’s a price worth paying.”
FOLK are still talking about the good weather at the weekend, and one or two people announced they had seen the first wasps of the year. As Joe Heenan put it: “There was a wasp in the house. I’m not saying it was big but I tried to kill it with a magazine and it took it off me and said, ‘I’ve already read this one’.”
15
Keeping Fit
We are all under pressure to keep ourselves fit these days, and fortunately some people can still smile about it.
GOOD to see older folk spending some time in council swimming pools to keep up their fitness. Many of them meet up with pals and make a morning of it. A Glasgow reader heard one such old fella say to his fellow senior-citizen swimmers the memorable line this week: “I’ll have to go out – my skin’s beginning to look like a corduroy bunnet.”
SIMON Caine, appearing at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe, reveals: “My dad says to me, ‘I’m going to Tesco’s, do you need anything?’ I tell him, ‘Yeah. Can you wear my Fitbit? I’m pretty sure I’m not going to hit my 10,000 steps.’”
A GLASGOW reader swears he heard a woman tell her pal in a West End coffee shop: “My goal was to lose a stone by Christmas. Just two stone to go!”
STILL good weather in Scotland, although it’s not as hot and clammy as London apparently. As Robin Flavell described it: “You know it’s hot when you’re on the Tube and you’re forced to wipe the sweat out of your eyes. And it’s not even your own sweat.”
HAVE you seen those folk on social media who go on about where they have run that day, even putting in a map? A reader heard a chap on the train into Glasgow tell his pal: “The best part about these punters posting their regular
running routes is it makes it easier to avoid them.”
IT has still been a bit chilly over the past few days. A Milngavie woman was heard telling her friends: “Who needs to spend all that money on Botox. I get the same result on my face just taking my dog out for a walk these mornings.”
STILL a bit Baltic out there. A reader down south phones to say: “Have just worked out the one thing we all do when we have to walk in the snow – we can’t stop ourselves looking at our neighbours’ roofs to see how good their loft insulation is.”
And as Alistair Barrie in London commented: “One of the best things about travelling when it snows in the UK is watching horrified foreigners realise quite how badly we cope. You can see them thinking, ‘Leave the EU? You can’t even make it out of Tottenham Hale.’”
FOLK have been having difficult journeys out on the roads with all that snow. But sometimes we have to question their motives. As Scots writer Mark Millar revealed: “Just bumped into a pal who made a long, horrendous journey to school in snow while nursing flu. His reasoning? Didn’t want to spend the day with the kids.”