A REMINDER that it's Valentine's Day today - you're welcome.

Alan Barlow in Paisley was buying his wife a card and a modest bunch of flowers in his local supermarket when the woman in front of him at the checkout looked at his purchases and said in a loud voice: "Is that all you've got?"

Says Alan: "Trying to defend myself, as an older married man, I said I had done my best, but then suggested that I would take my wife out for a meal, and buy her chocolates. This seemed to amuse the queue behind me. The lady then said, 'No. If that is all you've got then you can go in front of me!'"

Money joke's worth a punt

FURTHER suggestions on the Scottish currency now that Osborne won't play ball. Andy Ewan in Dunoon says: "We could just add two Fs to the end of the peso to let him know how we feel about being told that the pound has suddenly become Westminster's property."

And David Gardner muses on the old Irish currency the punt, but thinks it might be more in demand just now in the south of England.

Heaven's opened up

TALKING of the bad weather, an Ayrshire reader heard a theory: "We were discussing the inclement weather in the south when a friend piped up, 'Aye, it's like the seven plagues in biblical Egypt - God's way of telling the English, "Let my people go."'"

A nugget of wisdom

TALKING posh in shops, continued. Says Matt Vallance: "Many years ago, I was in Woolworth's in Ayr with my mother at the sweets counter. A well-groomed lady, quite obviously from Alloway, or perhaps Troon, was ahead of us and she, in a cut-glass voice, asked the lassie behind the counter for, 'A bar of noo-gah please.'

"Blank look from the shop assistant, until my mother stepped forward as interpreter. 'The wumman wants nugget hen,' brought a completion of the sale."

Fit for purpose

HOWEVER, tales of talking posh remind entertainer Andy Cameron of the classic yarn: "An old friend of mine in Ru'glen had a date in the 60s with a rather posh girl who had attended Westbourne School for Girls, and he took her to The Bernie Inn. Struggling to find conversation he thought he'd been rescued by a lady at the next table who collapsed. Boabby jumped up and declared to his date: 'It's OK I've seen this afore, ah think she's jist havin' a wee epileptic foot.'"

Children can be cruel

A READER who runs a clothing store tells us a mum was in with her primary school daughter for a new blazer when the assistant saw the little one was carrying a drawing she had made of a butterfly. Chatting to the wee girl the assistant noticed the butterfly had a downturned mouth, and asked why it was sad as butterflies were usually happy.

"Because it's a mummy butterfly," said the little one, showing perhaps too much wisdom on the plight of mothers these days.

Jealousy is off the chart

TAKE That crooner Robbie Williams was 40 yesterday. "By confidence," phones a reader, "that's as high as his records go in the charts these days." But we think he was just being jealous rather than accurate.

Interview with a box

A READER hears a student-type on the Subway tell his pal: "Wouldn't it be great to take a box to a job interview, point to it, then say, 'I do all my thinking outside that.'" Hmmmm …