BILL Allan from Stonehaven was walking past the town's Tolbooth Museum when he was stopped by an American tourist who asked him what the large object was outside the musuem's door.
Says Bill: "I replied that it was a mangle, and when she asked me what it was for, I said that in the past it was used to take the water out of clothes after they were washed. She said, 'Ok, ya mean it's a spin cycle?'"
Top pupil
OUR exam tales remind Sue Forsyth in Bearsden: "I was at Logan and Johnston Pre-Nursing College in Glasgow in the late-1960s when our anatomy teacher, Major MacDonald, told us of a cadet in her Army days who had obviously not studied enough for his exam on the eye. His woefully inadequate exam paper read, 'The eye is a very wonderful thing and most people have two'."
A Euro vision
A GREAT win for hirsute Austrian crossdresser Conchita Wurst in the Eurovision song contest. As Philip Ellis commented, a tad blasphemously: "Long hair. Handsome beard. Advocates peace, freedom and unity. Persecuted for being different. Guys, I think Jesus just won Eurovision."
A real wringer
HIs beard reminds us of the real ale drinker in Glasgow with an enormous shaggy beard and was asked in the pub what was the point of it. He replied: "At the end of a night's drinking you can ring it out and get another drink."
Take note
INDEPENDENCE oddities continued. Peter Meager in Cupar tells us: "I was on the Plymouth to Roscoff ferry last week and handed the girl on the till at the cafeteria a £20 Scottish note. She took it without hesitation, then blurted out, 'Goodness, I didn't know that independence had gone through and you had your own currency now'."
Funny old world
IT'S only May yet acts at the Edinburgh Fringe are firing in press releases to the newspaper, talking up their acts. But we prefer the self-effacing style of stand-up Lewis Schaffer, who tells us: "My main show is Lewis Schaffer: Success Is Not An Option, which will be 40 or 50 minutes of me trying to tell some new jokes, or trying to tell jokes you haven't heard, or trying to tell jokes you haven't heard in a while, and generally making a hash of it.
"I cannot see how this show, or what I am doing now will lead to anything good coming out of Edinburgh but I cannot stop."
Flushed out
OUR tales of toilets remind Jim Meikle in Killearn: "I used to demonstrate an early computer on the third floor of our offices in West Nile Street. This floor had no proper toilet facilities, merely a lone urinal. I remember one customer, from Ayrshire, asking if he could use the toilet prior to the demonstration. When I pointed out we only had this urinal, he replied, 'Naw son, that willnae work, I need an arsenal'."
Just kidding
A COLLEAGUE wanders over to tell us: "Recreate the feeling of being a five-year-old on your first day at school by going to your doctor's surgery to talk to the receptionist."
Only one goal
FINALLY on that Eurovision win. A reader in England phones to tell us: "I couldn't believe it in my local today. A punter announced Austria last one Eurovision in 1966 - the year England won the World Cup and it must be an omen. "Is there no occasion that win doesn't get a mention?"
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