Coining it in

A READER in Montrose upbraids us for referring to a collection in a Church of Scotland kirk and declares: "In the Church of Scotland it's not a collection, it's an offering." Well, that's us telt.

It does remind us, however, of Tony Roper's novel about the Rikki Fulton character the Rev I.M. Jolly in which the Rev recalls a cheap package holiday he took with his wife when the rickety plane they were on was in danger of crashing. Said the Rev Jolly: "The captain shouted to me, 'You're a minister, do something.' So I took up a collection.''

A scream

A FINAL adult film story as Ian McNair reminisces: "As teenagers we used to head to the New Bedford Cinema in the Gorbals on Friday nights for the X-rated House of Hammer horror movies double bill thinking we were pretty grown up. But stepping out into the Gorbals evening at the 10pm pub chucking out time was a whole lot scarier than anything we saw inside the cinema."

Sole searching

THE challenges of parenthood, continued. A reader in Clydebank asks: "Why is it that when my daughter is walking round her house she is always tripping over shoes her children leave lying, yet when she's rushing to take them out anywhere there are no shoes to be found?"

Dressing down

IT was World Book Day yesterday – my novel Bible Johnny is on Kindle – and Tory MSP Murdo Fraser decided to go as Eeyore it seems, as he declared on social media: "World Book Day – kids across the land go to school dressed as superheroes and Disney princesses in the forlorn hope that this is something to do with literature. In my day parents would just rustle outfits from old clothes but not many seem to do that now."

Amongst our favourite replies were:

*Happy children. Kryptonite to Tories since the 1900s.

*Don't worry, after Brexit the Tories will stuff them up chimneys like the good old days.

*I’m going to dress up as one of the victims of your party’s Universal Credit Policy, and sleep under a bridge.

Bottoms up

A READER tells us he can't really disagree with the woman in the Glasgow coffee shop who returned to sit with her pal and declared: "The only thing worse than a freezing cold public toilet seat is a warm one."

Take a bow

SCOTS violinist Nicola Benedetti looked so happy this week collecting her CBE award for services to music from Prince Charles at Buckingham Palace. Nicola has managed to make classical music popular across many different audiences. She once told us about performing a concert in Manchester, and while collecting her thoughts before a slow, considered piece, the audience went quiet, waiting politely for her to start playing. The silence was broken by an unmistakable Glaswegian voice shouting out: "Come on, Nikki, show us what you can do!"

Name dropping

WE mentioned addressing teachers in class, and Brian Chrystal recalls: "Walking along Bath Street with my mother in the 1960s we met my high school physics teacher, not known for his sense of humour, who stopped to say hello. 'Well, young man' he said, 'Aren't you going to introduce us?' Then watched, with what I swear was a malicious pleasure, as I just stopped myself from introducing him to Mum by his school moniker of McGrunt then struggled in a minor panic to recall his real name of Mr Macdonald."

Weighty issues

TODAY'S piece of daftness comes from a West End reader who emails: "I hate when I gain 10 pounds for a role, then realise I'm not even an actress."