OUR fire alarm picture reminded Jean Miller of a friend who was a fire prevention officer, visiting a Cambuslang school which had a new alarm system installed.

He told the head teacher that she could activate it by hitting it with the heel of her shoe.

Now the head teacher was obviously an intelligent woman as she wouldn't have become a head teacher otherwise, but she did nonetheless reply: "How do I get my leg up to that height?"

A modern hang-up

OFFICE parties have begun, and a Glasgow reader tells us about a young woman in his office, perhaps having imbibed too much, who was discussing her ex-boyfriend with other women from the office. She told them: "He texted 'Stop calling me'. I just wonder what he really means by that.

"Do you think I should phone and ask him?"

Hefty bill?

A SHAWLANDS reader shopping in the supermarket was queuing behind an old chap who was studying the leaflets for various financial services on offer by the company. The old chap turned to our reader and declared: "Do I want a mortgage? Just how much is this trolley of messages going to be?"

Memory test

OUR tale of the Glasgow mechanic telling the woman "Your gasket's blew" leading to her asking him what colour it should be, provokes a Bearsden reader: "My wife said the chap in the garage had terrible amnesia. When I asked why, she said she had rung up about getting a replacement battery for her Corsa and he asked her what year it was."

Kindred souls

WELL done Celtic this week, of course. Singer Rod Stewart tells in his autobiography of the madness of being a Celtic fan. He was in Vancouver and was heading to a bar at four in the morning to see a Celtic game due to the time difference. Wrote Rod: "The sun was just coming up, and I saw this bloke on his bicycle, with his cycle clips on, in his hooped Celtic shirt, pedalling determinedly through the empty streets, and I thought, 'You and me both, pal'."

Quiet, please

ANNOUNCEMENTS that you never expected to read: "Max Clifford requests that the media respect his privacy at this difficult time."

Heaven scent?

PASTOR Alan McKean in Fortrose, Ross-shire, has written a racy time-travel adventure book, The Scent of Time, which has just been published. A member of his congregation complained that it was too sexy to have been written by a pastor. But as Alan tells us: "Fortunately – perhaps because they realised that it's impossible to live on a clergyman's pension, and they didn't want me asking to sleep in their garages – my congregation rallied around me and the unnamed complainer vanished into the Highland mists."