ALISTAIR Cochrane in Prestwick phoned Waterstones bookshop to see if it had a copy of the independence White Paper, Scotland's Future, which has now gone into reprint, but it didn't have a copy.

Alistair says he was tempted to say to the shop worker: "Have you looked under fiction?"

Ukip's ideal home

TALKING of politics, as the debate goes on about whether an independent Scotland would remain in the European Union, Gilbert MacKay in Newton Mearns muses: "If Scotland is barred from the EU, should we start preparing for the arrival of Ukip refugees from England?"

Driving us up the wall

FOOTBALL phrases that give you the boak. Andy Ewan in Dunoon says: "Commentators often report that a player 'drove the ball home', and I think it is nice that they care so much for its welfare."

And moving to a differently shaped ball, sports writer Matt Vallance dislikes colleagues who write about rugby players "taking the captain's armband". Says Matt: "I first picked up a rugby ball in 1958. In all the years since, I have never seen a rugby XV captain wearing a captain's armband, yet still the younger writers use the term."

Gran's dead-pan question

A GLASGOW reader tells us about the family's great-grandmother celebrating her 90th birthday, so she was taken out for a meal at the weekend, a day before her actual birthday, where she was urged to open her presents in front of everyone. Unsure about opening them a day early she told the family: "What if I wake up dead tomorrow?"

Gone in a puff of smoke

WE mentioned the Prime Minister writing the Tory manifesto on the back of a fag packet, and Ian McSwan in Bothwell tells us of a friend many years ago, while working as a commercial traveller, writing orders down on the back of his cigarette packet. "All went well," says Ian, "until he was on the top deck of a bus, lit his last fag in a packet of 20, and threw the empty packet out the window, only then realising all the orders he had taken that day were on it."

Tale from the dark side

OVERHEARD conversations continued. Donald Grant in Paisley was in the checkout queue at a Braehead supermarket when the little girl in front of him turned to the woman with her and said: " Granny, why don't you make proper toast like mummy?"

The older woman asked rather frostily: "And how does mummy make 'proper" toast?" She noticeably cheered up when the little one replied: "Well your toast hasn't got black stuff to scrape off like mummy's does."

Donald suspects "mummy" was probably her daughter-in-law.

Another sad dad

OUR occasional series of dads who think they are funny. A young woman in Milngavie asked her dad what French toast was and he smilingly told her: "Just regular toast that smokes cigarettes and has a tiny moustache."

"You are such a sad man," she told him.

Ticking over nicely

"THAT new girl I'm dating ticked a lot of boxes," said the chap in the Glasgow pub to his mates.

"That said, she did think it was a little bit creepy that I had asked her to fill in a survey."