WE asked for your posh conversations in shops, and a reader says:

"I overhead a chap in my local store yesterday during the sleet when offered a carrier bag for his newspaper said, 'No thanks. If it gets wet it can be dried over the radiator, then my man will iron it.'

"I think he was kidding, but in Helensburgh you never know."

Underground underwear

OUTRAGEOUS spelling errors continued. Joe Marshall in Edinburgh recalls marking prelim exams where there was a question on limestone caverns. One pupil put forward the interesting theory that "starling tights" hung from the roof of such caverns.

The wisdom of students

AND MATTHEW Spicer tells us: "My daughter's flatmate at university missed a philosophy lecture and borrowed the notes of a colleague who was thought to be thorough in these matters. They contained a comprehensive account of the work of the hitherto neglected female Greek philosopher, Iris Dottle."

Low point in hi-fi story

MANY folk have been selling unwanted items on the internet site Gumtree. Reader Kate Jackson had put up for sale a vintage hi-fi with turntable, tape deck and radio. She thought she had a buyer until he emailed via Gumtree: "Thank you for your phone call. My wife overheard our conversation and said if I go about buying the hi-fi I would not be allowed back in the house, so sorry, cannot buy."

That's him told then.

A tram fine mess!

NOSTALGIA alert! Goodness it's 50 years since the trams, but that doesn't stop a reader telling us, when we asked for examples of being forgetful: "My mother was just completing her purchases in the local fishmonger's when she heard the tram rattling up the road, so she dashed out and just caught it at the nearby stop. It wasn't till she was nearly home that she realised that she had left my new wee sister in her pram outside the shop, as one did in the 1950s.

"Luckily, we were on the telephone so she could call the shop, and by the time she got back the wee one was in the back being cooed over by all the female staff members."

To coin a phrase

SO Chancellor George Osborne says Scotland can't have the pound in an it's-ma-ba'-and-you-can't-play-with-it moment. So what would the Scottish currency be? John Dyer looks out the window and suggest the Dreichma. Any other suggestions?

Letters of commendation

TALKING of dreich, Jane Crawford in windy Lossiemouth tells us that after the recent gales they had a lot of damage to the manse. She tells us: "My bemused minister husband brought in the "T" and the "E" from our front gate, and has pointed out that it now reads 'HE MANS'."

Wetter together?

GRIM pictures of the flooding in the south of England just now. A reader down south phones to tell us: "Of course David Cameron doesn't want Scotland to leave the UK - you'll soon be the only part of Britain above the flood line."

A trip down the street

RHYS James tells us he was impressed by the chap he saw who accidentally tripped over in the street. The chap immediately looked up and shouted: "Ref!"