EXPAT Jim Farrell, now living in Ontario, Canada, returned to Scotland recently for a visit, and due to the good weather was strolling around Glasgow in shorts and sandals.

As he had been spending quite a time golfing in the sunshine in Canada, his legs were tanned but his ankles white from where he had been wearing his golf shoes.

Says Jim: "Exiting Queen Street station, I was spotted by one young girl who said to her pal: 'Look at that silly old man – he painted his tan on, and forgot to do his ankles'.

"Glasgow at its finest."

Ear today ...

OUR mention of band names reminds Alex Gowans: "I play for a Stirling-based band called The Skelpit Lug. A while back we were booked to play a gig on Iona. I was dealing with the booking and had a conversation on the phone with one of the organisers, a lady whose accent revealed that she was not a native of the Western Isles but obviously from somewhere well south of the Border. "She asked what our band was called and I told her. She commented that the name was unusual. When we arrived to play the gig we discovered that we were billed as the Celtic Slug Ceilidh Band. We briefly considered a name change, but decided against it."

Idle talk

THE summer holidays are still stuttering on for students and pupils alike. One Newton Mearns reader tells us she constantly pushed her student son, back from his univeristy, to get a job. However, he came back from one interview and told her: "I asked what the pay was, and they said they would pay me what I was worth after seeing how much I could do.

"Well there's no way I'm going to work for that kind of money."

Nothing doing

AND an exasperated mother in Hyndland saw her teenage daughter hanging about the house and asked what her plans were for the day. "Nothing," the girl replied. "That's what you did yesterday," said her mum.

"Not finished it yet," she replied.

Viniculture

A GROUP of women were discussing various ways of self-improvement in a Glasgow coffee shop when one of them declared: "I go to a book club with the girls after work on Friday. So far we only read wine labels, but it's a start."

A dead end?

GREAT thing, satnav, but occasionally it can throw up problems. Reader Ria Scott in Shotts tells us: "On a recent visit to Dumfries House in Cumnock the SatNav was not quite used to finding the estate in deepest, darkest Ayrshire. At one stage it led me in error up a single-track road at the end of which I found myself in a cemetery and at which point the satnav announced: 'You have reached your destination'. I am just glad that it was not my final destination."

Stolen treasure

MANY readers were quite taken with the Network Rail spokesman on the TV news discussing cable thefts from Scottish railways who is serendipitously named Nick King.

On a different note

JIM Evans reads the stories in The Herald about Pope Francis and his views on gay people, and musician Min-Jin Kym getting her Stradivarius back, and comments: "I'm concerned about the level of sex and violins in the paper these days."