Navigation for numpties
OCEANIC voyager Malcolm Boyd from Milngavie once sailed from London to India, via Cape Town, as an engineer officer.
Having just crossed the Equator, Malcolm and some chums were contentedly sunbathing on deck when the navigation cadet, on his first sea trip, asked them: "Are you busy in the engine room?"
The third engineer glanced up from his book and explained: "No, The main engine is stopped as we’re going downhill.”
When the engineers next spoke to the young lad, he revealed that senior colleagues had advised him that if he genuinely wanted to excel at navigation, he should avoid friendly chats with sunbathing engineers…
Brought to book
AS a traditional handshaker, pensioner Alasdair Sinclair decided to embrace the modern era by learning to man-hug.
“By good fortune I found in a charity shop a book titled How to Hug,” says Alasdair. “Alas, it turned out to be a stray volume of an old encyclopaedia.”
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Money matters
PHILOSOPHICAL musings from reader Neil Blake, who says: “If I had a pound for every time I had an existential crisis … it wouldn’t matter, because life is meaningless.”
Basket case
IRRITATED reader Selma Murray is mulling over activities that should lead to a stiff jail sentence, yet somehow are not actionable in a court of law.
“I was in the self-service queue at Sainsbury’s,” she says. “The woman in front of me plonked her basket down at a till. Then she must have realised she had more groceries to buy. So she returned to the main shopping aisles, while leaving her basket at the till as a ‘place holder’.
“She was gone over five minutes. On her return she happily skipped the lengthy queue and reacquainted herself with her basket.”
Adds Selma: “If you have to do more shopping, you gracefully give up your place at the till. That’s a cast iron law. Which is why I’d give this shady shopper 10 years to life in the pokey – and no time off for good behaviour.”
By royal decree
THE Coronation of King Charles III will soon be upon us, and everyone is thrilled. Okay, maybe not everybody…
“I asked my husband if he was excited about the ceremony,” says reader Margaret Barr.
Hubby replied: “I’m a monarchist under very specific circumstances. And those circumstances are that I’m the one being crowned.”
Rules refused
“IF I had to describe myself in one word,” says Andrew Brown from Girvan, “it would be ‘not very good at following instructions’.”
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