Read it and weep

Reader Craig Millar had to e-mail a number of GPs around Scotland, and was impressed by the automated reply from one in Ayrshire which read: "I have retired. This e-mail address will no longer be read. Friends know where to find me. Enemies do not."

"Does it fill us with confidence," asks Paul McGivern, "to know Speaker John Bercow' is an anagram of new cash probe joker'?"

England expects too much
A little bit of schadenfreude, we feel, as a viewer from Glasgow, presumably trying to keep his face straight, joins in the debate on the BBC's website, about the only two British tennis players left in Wimbledon after round one coming from Scotland.

He states: "What's wrong with English tennis? Two days gone at Wimbledon and no English players left. A few tales of plucky losers, but that happens every year. Despite all the money spent on tennis in England, why can't they find a decent player?

"The two Scottish players looked like they actually wanted to win. The English players I saw looked like they were scared of winning. Is it a problem in England of lacking the winning mentality, or is the talent just not there?"

Yes, he sounds so sincere.

To cone a phrase
The good weather in Glasgow, combined with a wee cairry-oot, can make folk a little foolish. We watch one shrieking girl at Glasgow Green, pick up two red and white traffic cones, hold them to her chest, and bellow at her palls: "Look! Silly cone breasts!"

Sour note
Glamorous female string quartet Bond, above, will be playing their new arrangement of Vivaldi's Four Seasons at Glasgow's Silverburn mall on July 4. Cellist Gay-Yee tells us they recently played a concert in Lebanon, and as the country's President was attendance, armed security guards were everywhere. One of the quartet asked a guard how to say in Arabic, "Good evening, we are very glad to be here in your beautiful country", as she thinks it's a nice touch to make an effort in the local language.

The girls were surprised, though, that it was met with silence from the audience. Days later, a fan wrote to their website that while the concert was fantastic she wondered why they told the crowd: "Hello, may s**t be upon you."

So we wonder what the locals in Pollok will tell the girls to say.

Touching thought
Mark Boyle was in Ayr's delightfully traditional Hourstons department store, where the genteel of the town gather. He noticed many a perplexed look, and even the hint of a flush below the rouge here and there, when it was announced over the store's public address system that any ladies visiting the Estee Lauder counter would be given a "free touch-up".

He didn't wait to see if there was a rush.

Reality check
Scottish film director Bill Forsyth, speaking at the Edinburgh Film Festival, explained that some of the male characters' inept behaviour around girls in his films was probably down to Bill's own personal experience of school in the early 1960s, when times were very different from today's casual intermingling between male and female pupils. Lamented Bill: "You had to be a real cool dude then to even get near the girls."

Not at the races
And on the question of bad directions, Malcolm Pirnie tells us: "As a student, I worked on the buses on the Isle of Wight. It was not uncommon to find London punters at the ferry connection, asking directions to the races at Sandown, a little beach resort on the island. Their faces collapsed when told that Sandown Races were held at Esher, which they had passed through on the train from Waterloo."