AH, the workings of a young mind.

A reader on a bus into Glasgow yesterday heard a young chap trying to convince his mate to go along with him to some event, but his pal replied that he couldn't go as he had a doctor's appointment.

"Can you not phone in sick?" urged the first one.

Stuck on you

A READER with an interest in politics hears Prime Minister David Cameron describing the Coalition: "It's not a marriage, it is a Ronseal deal – it does what it says on the tin."

"So OK to weatherproof a fence," says our reader, "but just rubbish at fixing the economy."

Behind closed doors

FAREWELL to the rotund Lord Strathclyde as leader of the House of Lords. We well remember when he held his famous parties at the Tory Party conference every year with the bath in his suite filled with ice and bottles of champagne.

One year at the Imperial Hotel in Blackpool a chatty television presenter went into the bathroom to answer her mobile phone, and stayed in so long a chap from housekeeping was sent up to take the locked door off its hinges if need be – presumably as they were worried about the woman's health, not as a desire to liberate more of the champagne.

Bite-size deal

SUMMING up January, Norman Ferguson in Edinburgh tells us: "Two items were pushed through the letterbox: a flyer for the cooncil's leisure department asking me to 'Jump into January' and join a gym, and a flyer for a pizza outlet offering 50% off all pizzas.

"Which will win out in the end I wonder?"

Weighty issue

AND a Bearsden reader swears to us his four-year-old daughter came into the living room and earnestly asked if the bathroom scales were really sore to stand on.

When dad asked why, she replied: "Mummy just stood on them and screamed!"

Doors of perception

TRICKY time, the festive season. As Iain Todd confesses: "I got stuck at the entrance to a pub in Ullapool. I could see people inside but I couldn't figure out how to get in the door. My first attempt was to push it, my second attempt was to pull it and my last attempt was to shoulder charge it. Turns out it was a sliding door. Oops. I blame the door not the four pints I had before getting there."

Short and sweet

WHO says Scottish football fans don't have poetry in their soul? Despite its brevity, John Daly in Houston passes on: "Some wordsmith wrote on the Tartan Army Message Board – Ode to a Hot Day. There were only two lines:

"'Gie's a cone.

"Goan.'

"Sometimes less is more."

Name game

TIME to end our look at unusual names as Wallace Milligan in Ayr tells us: "Working in London 30 years ago, I spent many happy times at the hotel bar with Richard O' Shea and Richard Shaw, who both worked for Lever Brothers in Ruislip. Both preferred to be called Rick."