Panda to your Every Desire (10 page)

Totting up the cost of the trip on the way home, our reader surmised: “That one fish cost us £450.”

“What!” replied his mate. “It’s a good thing we didn’t catch any more.”

NEIL ARTHUR on Arran tells us that for many years bagpipe tunes were named after battles, or regiments’ farewells to trouble spots, such as “The Barren Rocks of Aden”.

Perhaps a piper’s life isn’t so exciting any more, as he noted from the World Pipe Band Championships that Lothian & Borders Police band’s medley included “The Day the Co-op Flooded”.

A MILNGAVIE reader was phoning her friend but the phone in the kitchen was answered by her teenage son who said: “I think she’s in the shower – hang on and I’ll check.”

Our reader thought she would then hear the phone being put down and the sound of him going upstairs. Instead, he turned the kitchen tap on, her friend howled down from upstairs that the shower was scalding, and the lad said: “Yes, she is.”

READER Gordon Neish likes the can-do attitude of Google maps. If you type in seeking directions from China to Japan, it gives detailed instructions to get to Shanghai on the coast then adds: “Jet-ski across the Pacific Ocean for 782 kilometres.”

OUR TALES of how confusing Scottish idioms can be to visitors reminds Andrew Murray in Greenock of how a positive can often mean a negative.

His favourite is a wee boy asking his mother for sweeties and receiving the confusing reply: “Sweeties? Ah’ll gie ye sweeties!”

PROVING that Edinburgh folk really are friendly, Denise Percival tells us a colleague arrived at an Edinburgh law firm and asked the receptionist where the gents’ toilet was.

“I’ll just come and point you in the right direction,” she replied.

“No need to go that far,” replied the anxious colleague.

TRAVEL search site Skyscanner has listed the top five fish and chip shops in the world as: Publicis Drugstore Brasserie in Paris, A Salt and Battery in New York, the Frying Scotsman in Taipei, the Crispy Cod in Fuengirola, and Atlantic Fast Food in Coatbridge. We only mention it as a reader once claimed you could never mention Paris, New York and Coatbridge in the one sentence, and make any sense.

THE ROYAL Society for the Protection of Birds is campaigning against government cuts to countryside funding, arguing they will harm wildlife. For some reason, it reminds us of the comedian who once declared: “I bought a self-assembly bird table.

“It’s been out in the garden for a month now and the chirpy wee beggars still haven’t put it up.”

MANY a text messenger adds LOL to their text message to indicate “laugh out loud” at an amusing incident. A reader hears a young woman on the bus tell her pal: “I find it hard to believe you laugh out loud as much as you claim to.”

THE PERENNIAL question of sex among senior citizens came up at a golf club, where a chap conceded he had sex with his wife about once a month. Others concurred, but one bold pensioner said: “With me, it’s almost every night of the week.”

As his mates looked awestruck, he added: “Monday, almost. Tuesday, almost. Wednesday…”

OCCASIONALLY we discuss misheard song lyrics. “In ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ from
The Wizard of Oz
,” asks reader John McGowan, “what was Dorothy doing ‘wi’ a pie’?”

GORDON MARTIN writes: “Your recent stories on misheard lyrics reminded me that my uncle was convinced that Bill Hailey was singing ‘Shake Marilyn Monroe’ in his classic hit.

“I guess the sound quality on 78s wasn’t that great.”

MISHEARD lyrics continued. Frazer Beggs in Australia says: “In the eighties my grandfather used to hear the words ‘wake me up before yer cocoa’ from the well known Wham! song.”

ALISTAIR FULTON in Govan says: “When I was in my early twenties, I was sure I heard the Beatles singing, ‘We all live in a yellow soup tureen.’

“Now I consider myself lucky to hear any words at all.”

Sometimes you witness the daftest of things, or hear the oddest of conversations out in the street. Fortunately our readers let us know.

A READER in Partick watched as two young chaps lifted up a sofa that had been left out on the pavement for refuse collection outside a block of flats. He assumed they were going to take it away for their own gaff.

But instead they turned it upside down and shook it. Two or three coins dropped on to the pavement, and the chaps put the sofa back down, collected the coins and walked on.

EVEN when celebrating a birthday, Glaswegians can’t pass up the chance of a sly wee dig. A Burnside reader on an 18 bus going through the city’s East End spotted a giant poster strung across a wall which declared: “Dougie Robb is fifty today. He cannae believe it.”

Underneath was written: “Neither can we. We thought he was sixty.”

WHAT’S happening in Glasgow these days, an ex-pat asks. Well, we pass on from Alex Robertson: “I was at the People’s Palace on Sunday where a drunken Glaswegian incoherently argued with a door preserved from Duke Street Prison. He shouted aggressively while swaying back and forth, before punching said door. A small crowd of tourists gathered, presumably in the mistaken belief this was all part of the show.”

A READER on the bus from Balfron into Glasgow heard a young woman from the village describing a weekend party to her pal, and announcing: “I didn’t realise how drunk I was until I went to wipe something off my cheek – and realised it was the floor.”

DURING Glasgow’s West End Festival, a colleague of STV presenter John MacKay overheard a woman giving her other half a telling off. “We’re here for the weans,” she said, “no for you to get mad wi’ it.”

THE SUN just occasionally shining during the summer reminded Hugh Nicolson of walking through Govan when a grimfaced local lady in her fifties, wearing a three-quarter-length coat, came out with one of those memorable Glasgow comments.

She told her two diminutive pals as they passed Hugh: “I don’t care whit embday says, this coat’s cummin’ aff.”

JOHN LAWSON from West Kilbride was passing the cement works just south of Dunbar on the A1 when he noticed a large road sign reading “Cement Works”. Underneath, someone had added: “If you get the mix right.”

ONLY in the West End one suspects … Rony Bridges was standing on Byres Road reading a
Big Issue
he had bought when a woman took it out of his hands and gave him £2. He feels he was perhaps just a tad too casually dressed. Or as a friend cruelly remarked on his dress sense: “You been running through Oxfam again with sticky tape on?”

A PUB discussion in Edinburgh was about the news that iPhones have a built-in tracking device which monitors everywhere the owner goes. Although some in the discussion expressed their anger at such a thing, one sage pointed out: “What’s the big deal? It’s not as if iPhone users don’t tell you on Facebook where they are every five minutes anyway.”

A READER who was having a fag outside a Byres Road pub was approached by a mendicant who asked: “Excuse me pal, any chance of a fag?”

Our reader not unreasonably pointed out: “You’re already smoking one, mate.”

“Just planning for the future,” the beggar replied.

WE LIKE to hear about visitors to Glasgow and what they see. John Stewart in Saltcoats recounts: “On a visit to the Glasgow Science Centre with our grandson we were, as always, fascinated by the incredible technology and engineering on display. However, as we were leaving the car park our parking token failed to raise the barrier. On pressing the emergency button provided I was promptly told to ‘gie the machine a clatter, pal’. Of course this worked – true Glasgow technology!”

THE BIGGEST growth area in recent years has been social network sites such as Facebook where folk describe themselves in glowing terms. One student we spotted in the West End yesterday was wearing a T-shirt with the heartfelt message across the front: “I wish I were more like my online persona.”

SOME overheard conversations stick in the mind. Neil Mackenzie from Cunninghamhead in Ayrshire was in an Italian restaurant in Kilmarnock last week when he heard a diner ask her companion: “What’s veal?”

“I think it’s deer,” he hazarded a guess.

“No it’s not,” she replied. “It’s cheaper than steak.”

ONLY in Glasgow … Judy Thomson was watching BBC Reporting Scotland on the arrest in Glasgow connected with the Stockholm terrorist bombing. A neighbour was interviewed about the armed police raid, and said: “I heard a lot of noise which woke me up. Police were shouting, ‘Lie down, lie down.’ Doors were banging, there were firearms.”

The neighbour added: “I thought it must be the end of a party or something.”

UNUSUAL dog names attracted our attention recently. Gaynor Allan, who runs the Ruff Rovers dog-walking service in Milngavie, tells us she bumped into a chap with a Staffordshire bull terrier that he called Giro.

Says Gaynor: “I thought it was because he ran around in circles, until the owner said, ‘It’s what unemployed people get.”’

LINGUISTIC mix-ups remind Robert Calder of his brother working on a film shoot in Glasgow on a really cold day when the English director asked one of the Glasgow kids involved if he was cold. “I’m freezin’!” the youngster replied.

“How about you?” the director asked the next lad.

“Am urny,” he replied.

“Lovely to meet you Ernie,” responded the director.

A SENIOR citizen in Motherwell tells us he was just about to go into a town centre newsagent’s to buy a lottery ticket when he slipped on the ice and dropped the pound coin he had in his hand.

A young chap behind him politely said: “I’ll get that for you, sir.”

Our reader was pondering on the politeness of today’s youth when the chap picked up the coin and did a runner.

A LONDON visitor to Glasgow tells us she is always impressed by west of Scotland parenting skills. But we think she was joking.

When we asked for an example, she told us: “I was in Buchanan Street on Saturday when a child was screeching to his mother over and over that he wanted to go to McDonald’s.

“Eventually, in sheer exasperation, she tugged him along and shouted: ‘It’ll be Smackdonald’s you’ll get if ye don’t shut up.”’

YES, IT’S a stressful time in the shops before Christmas, and a reader in Buchanan Street heard a woman lecture an older woman: “What’s the point in having a smoke detector if you never put a battery in it?” And the older woman snapped back: “What’s the point in having a daughter if all she does is ask stupid questions?”

MOST Scots have been commenting on how cold it was last winter. A Dennistoun reader was much taken with the woman in his local shop who declared: “It was that cold my da’s teeth were chatterin’ – and they were still in the glass!”

IT CAN be confusing for some, it seems, working out which mendicants on the streets of Glasgow are homeless. Steven McKenzie was at Glasgow’s Central Station when a chap approached a commuter and asked with hand extended: “I need to pay my electricity. Can you help?”

The sceptical commuter replied: “That’s some kitted-out box you stay in, mate.”

OUR STORY about billboards reminded Brian Ross of the giant one near Glasgow’s Queen Street Station some years ago that had a health poster about rising levels of sexually transmitted diseases, and giving the number of the clinic to call.