Peach of a song
A POSTSCRIPT to our stories about Engelbert Humperdinck's song Please Release Me – reader David McVey in Milton of Campsie was in Edinburgh the other day where he noticed that a busker, trying to gain some cash from American tourists, changed the words of the song he was singing when they went past to the more presidential "Please impeach me, let me go".
Fly guy
A GLASGOW reader swears to us that he was on a Ryanair flight to Spain alongside a group of boisterous lads on a stag weekend. One of the chaps had a seat beside a young woman whom he tried to engage in conversation with the line: "Do Ryanair charge you extra to sit beside a handsome young man?" "Yes, they do," she immediately responded. "But I wasn't willing to pay it."
Rum do
THE Herald news story that Harris in the Outer Hebrides is in the top ten of tourist destinations to photograph, reminds us of a reader on Harris who told us that on his first visit to Glasgow as a young lad he was in a restaurant which had turkey goujons on the menu. Not having heard the word goujon before, he asked the Glasgow waitress what they were. She told him: "Same as chicken goujons, son, but made with turkey."
And we once read in a book about Scotland's whaling industry that a wizened doctor from Harris, employed by the whaling company, was asked by a sailor how to treat a cold. The doc replied: "Buy a bottle of rum, two oranges, and a glass. Place an orange on both the bottom bedposts. Keep sipping the rum until you see three oranges, and then you should be cured."
Swell guys
TO GET to Lewis and Harris you have to sail across The Minch, notorious for its difficult sea conditions at times. Musician Roy Gullane tells us: "The first time I crossed the Minch it was a 'wee bit choppy' that day, resulting in a multitude of passengers 'recycling' their collective groceries over the side of the vessel. In the midst of all this, I noticed a couple of crew members, suspended over the water in a rather flimsy looking cradle, laughing and joking away as they painted the side of the boat."
THOSE WERE THE DAYS: The day a robot called on the Lord Provost of Glasgow
Crying foul
GOOD to see old standards still being retained. A reader attending the Ayr/Boroughmuir rugby match recently tells us one of the travelling Boroughmuir supporters was in full flow using quite earthy language to tell the referee about his inadequacies. He was then pulled-up for his bad language – by an 11-year-old ball boy from Ayr's Wellington School, Ayrshire's only independent school. "To be fair," says our reader, 'he did what he was told by the youngster, and could laugh about it afterwards."
Page turner
A GLASGOW reader tells us she was in a coffee shop in the city when a woman on her way out stopped another lady in the queue and told her: "That's a lovely perfume you are wearing, what is it?" The coffee buyer merely replied: "February Vogue, round about page 90."
Married life
TODAY'S thought-provoking comment comes from a Hyndland reader who emails: "Nobody says, 'What are you going on about?' more than a man who knows exactly what you are going on about."
Raise a glass
WE started our stories about purloined pub glasses with a tale about La Bonne Auberge in Glasgow city centre so we should end them with Daniel McColgan telling us: "Way back in the early days of the original La Bonne Auberge, located in Park Terrace, in the eighties, it was, I believe, the first bar to serve the very fashionable Stella Artois. To this day I still have the half pint glass that, I assure you, was given to me for my regular custom, by the then manager."
THOSE WERE THE DAYS: The day a robot called on the Lord Provost of Glasgow
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