WELL done to everyone running the London Marathon at the weekend, especially all the Scots who made it down, and raised huge amounts for charity. A reader tells us he was on the London Tube when he heard a young chap tell the girl beside him: "Did you know that London Marathon runners can use the Tube for free today?"

She thought about this for a moment before replying: "Isn't that cheating?"

MEANWHILE in Glasgow's George Square at the weekend there was a colourful gathering in support of independence. As hundreds of people arrived for it, James Doleman was heard to comment: "It's on days like this that I wished I'd joined my cousin in the saltire-making business."

Incidentally as the supporters gathered, a flute band was heard approaching the Square. There were mutterings about whether it was a Unionist counter-protest but in fact was an Irish Republican march going past. As Tommy Sheridan announced from the George Square stage: "Don't be alarmed. They're friendly."

THE weather in Glasgow was a bit changeable at the weekend. As reader Jack Konopate put it: "Glasgow as a city, is unique in many ways. However it must be one of the few cities in the world, where one can get sunburn, and frostbite, in the same week."

WE asked for your canvassing stories, and Jim Slavin in Linlithgow recalled: "I stood as an independent candidate in Livingston at the last election, and approaching an older lady who was tending her beautiful garden I thought that she looked like someone who might appreciate an MP not from the mainstream parties. So I proceeded to tell her how I thought the Labour Party took the voters of Livingston for granted.

"I had not noticed the poster in her window but she was not long in pointing it out to me, and telling me in no uncertain manner, that it was a photograph of her son, the Labour Party candidate Graeme Morrice.

"On election night a smiling Graeme asked how I had enjoyed meeting his mother."

A READER hears a student in Glasgow announce that she "wished she had a Kindle that never ran out of power." He wanted to rush over to her and shout: "That's a book! You're talking about a book!"

ONE of the range of Lynx deodorants that teenage boys like to engulf themselves in is called Lynx Africa. James Martin ponders: "In Africa, do they have a deodorant called 'Lynx UK', which smells of chip fat, alcopops, and misery?"

WHEN it was sunny, a West End reader tells us she was enjoying sitting in her garden near the university hearing the chat of the students passing by over the wall. Unfortunately you could only hear snatches of conversation. She says: "I heard one young woman tell her pal, 'The thing was, she turned up with a bottle of cherry Lambrini and she thought it was non-alcoholic'.

"I so wanted to hear how that one ended."

A PHILOSOPHICAL point raised in Glasgow's Buchanan Street on Saturday night. A reader hears a young chap ask: "What's that seagull eating?" "I think it's a chicken nugget," opined his pal.

"Wait, is that not like it's eating itself?" replied the first lad. Our reader is still puzzling over that.