Penny didn't drop

READER David Strang was at the Avenue shopping centre in Newton Mearns and tells us: "There were several women carrying large white pails collecting money for charity. A lady in front of me was asked if she would like to donate, and she replied, 'I gave you something yesterday but you probably don't remember me as I am wearing a different jacket' and off she went. I said to the collector as I was dropping my coin in to her pail, 'Is that the best excuse you have ever heard for not donating?' She said, 'Yes'."

Sticky situation

KENNY Reid tells us he was at Edinburgh Airport yesterday when the announcement came over the PA system: "Would the person who's left a walking stick at the champagne bar please return to collect it." We can't help wondering if Scots are the opposite of everyone else and can actually do without a walking stick after alcohol instead of needing one.

Where's the beef

OUR tale of the firefighter cooking for his crew and passing off fried bread as fish reminds Margaret Thomson: "One Sunday I had made a large beef casserole to feed my family. An hour before lunch-time we were visited by a couple we knew and two of their friends. Panic! Naturally we asked them to stay for lunch. When dishing out, being as frugal as I dared, I simply could not stretch the meat. So, I broke up a couple of pancakes and drowned them with gravy, and no one said a word!"

What a card

ANYONE with teenage children will know that ID cards from folk over 21 are constantly borrowed in order to get into clubs. One bouncer tells us: “Someone accidentally handed me his real ID instead of his fake. I said: ‘This says you’re 19’” and he replied: ‘That’s my old one, here’s my real ID’ and handed me an entirely different person’s ID as if his name and birthday had magically changed.”

On that note

GROWING old. continued. Retired doctor John Hay in the Western Isles tells us he was perturbed when listening to the BBC news on the radio, reporting on the out-of-control wildfires in Europe during the current Continental heatwave, to hear that “musicians might blow up”. He was trying to work out how that could possibly happen until he heard on a later broadcast that it was in fact ammunition on an army base threatened by the conflagration in Germany, and he has vowed to have his hearing tested.

Doctor's orders

LATEST research has shown that obese Scots outnumber smokers by nearly two to one. It reminds us of being at a business lunch in Glasgow where a speaker said she had been at her doctor's for a check-up where she was asked what she weighed. "Eight and a half stone," she replied, but the doc asked her to pop on the scales, and she came in at nine stone, two pounds.

He then asked her height, but after replying 5ft 5in, she was asked to stand against a height measuring pole and actually came in at 5ft 3in. He then took her blood pressure and announced it was a bit on the high side. "No wonder," she told him. "When I came in here I was tall and slender. Now I'm short and fat."

Fur goodness sake

A KILMARNOCK reader was at Irvine Beach where he overheard a chap bending down to pat the dog of a friend he had bumped into while telling her: "People say their owners are a lot like their dogs, but your dog is lovely." Our reader thinks the woman didn't even realise it wasn't a compliment.

Read more: 1940: Lauder urges Scots to help finance 'costliest-ever war'