Bowled over

OUR cafe stories remind our contact at the Royal Scottish National Orchestra: "Moons ago a string quartet from the RSNO was despatched from Glasgow to promote the orchestra’s forthcoming season. At a break in performances, they stopped for lunch at a hostelry in rural Angus. Having scanned the menu, one of the musicians asked the attentive, though perhaps inexperienced, waitress what the 'soupe de jour' was. Endeavouring to find out, the waitress returned triumphantly from the kitchens to declare that it was, in fact, the Soup of the Day."

Taking the pill

GROWING old continued. Says Margaret Thomson: "Overheard in the supermarket queue, 'Ah couldn't work out why ma thumbnail kept splitting. Then ah realised it was from pushing aw these wee pills oot o' the packets!'"

Going for gold

SATURDAY is National B&B Day apparently, celebrating Britain's original cottage industry. Booking website Eviivo tells us that among the most unusual requests B&B owners have had from guests were:

* To provide a set of spare false teeth as the guest had forgotten his.

* To give a guest permission to wear gold hot pants to breakfast.

* To make the room noisy as it was too quiet for a woman from New York who couldn’t sleep.

* To tear the toilet paper into separate sheets.

A bit fishy

IT reminds us of our favourite B&B story when a chap from Glasgow in Inverness for a wedding returned to his guest house eager for more drink. He discovers le patron's personal drinks cabinet (locked) and burgles a bottle of wine which he fully intends to replace.

Minutes later the owner storms downstairs in dressing gown shouting: ''You're stealing my drink! The fish is singing! The fish is singing!'' The guest realises that Big-Mouthed Billy Bass, one of those fish-on-a-plaque ''novelty'' items, is indeed singing. The B&B owner, troubled before with guests borrowing his booze, had alarmed his drinks cabinet by wiring it to the fish. Any more B&B tales?

Mirror image

A NEWTON Mearns reader swears to us that his teenage daughter announced: "My friends say that I’m self-absorbed, so I took a long, hard look at myself. Beautiful."

Well stuffed

THE HERALD's obituary of construction firm boss Sir William McAlpine mentioned his love of railway memorabilia. A reader tells us that Sir William collected so many objects from railways that he once auctioned off surplus items – including a stuffed dog called London Jack in a glass case. We are not sure of the demand for stuffed dogs but it seems that over 100 years ago Jack patrolled Waterloo Station collecting money for an orphanage. He was so popular that when he died he was stuffed and put in the glass case, which continued to be used as a collecting point for the orphanage ? until British Rail got rid of him.

Your funeral

AN Ayrshire golf club member says day-time television was being discussed in the clubhouse where a fellow member opined: "If the adverts on day-time TV are to be believed, the viewers are basically folk recuperating with a work-place accident that wasn't their fault, making PPI claims while planning their funerals so as not to be a burden on their loved ones, and all the while worrying about incontinence."