HARRY Potter author JK Rowling caused a bit of a stir yesterday by donating a right few quid to the No campaign in the Scottish referendum.

At one point she was one of the most talked about subjects on the social media site Twitter, which they call trending. As one excitable Potter fan tweeted: "JK Rowling is trending! I wish it's to say that there will be another Harry Potter movie! But I guess not."

Not to be sneezed at

AH, the holiday season has begun. As Liam Chalmers in Dumfries tells us: "We were having breakfast in a small hotel on Mull last week. The chap at the next table received his bacon, scrambled egg and toast and asked the young waitress, 'Do you have any black pepper?'.

"The lass disappeared for a few minutes. When she returned she said, 'We don't appear to have any black pepper - but do you want to try this one? It's sorta brown'."

Danger spice

AND talking of pepper, a reader was dining in a popular Italian restaurant in Glasgow when the young woman at the next table asked for pepper on her penne pasta. After the waiter had returned with the grinder and used it over the dish and then walked away, the woman muttered to her friend: "At what point do you think that Italian waiters stopped trusting us with the pepper?"

Reduced to a shadow

FURTHER afield than Mull, a reader just back from Majorca felt for the father who was pointing out to his toddler son: "See that dark area in the water slowly moving? It's a lot of fish swimming together."

As the two of them stood there watching it, the little lad excitedly shouted: "They're on the sand!"

His dad quietly answered: "Or it could be a cloud."

Looks fishy

SOME folk in favour of Scottish independence claim that many British institutions have been subtly backing the Union. Ron Grant in Elgin wonders what the SNP's deputy leader thinks of the latest commemorative stamp issue from the Royal Mail which features fish at risk of extinction. One of the stamps features a long-tailed fish with the caption: "Sturgeon. Threatened."

Visible sign of ageing

THE Edinburgh Fringe brochure is out, and we bump into Maxine Jones who is putting on her show Invisible Women, at The Merchants' Hall, about how women in their fifties seem to turn invisible and get overlooked. "Though I do find I've slept with more people as I've got older," Maxine tells us. "On trains, planes, buses - I just can't stay awake," she explains.

Terror on the road

"HAVE you ever taken part in any extreme sports?" a chap asked his pals in a Glasgow pub the other night.

After thinking about this, one pal replied: "I did take my teenage daughter out for a driving lesson."

Going into wrap-tures

THE shopping site Amazon asks for reviews of products it sells and this week the company revealed its favourite reviews. It includes a run-of-the-mill roll of aluminium foil which led to one purchaser putting on the Amazon site: "When I wrap my naked body in this lush, extravagant foil I feel transformed, and I wander the streets, mostly at night, fighting crime."