STROLLING down Buchanan Street, Glasgow, reader Martha Roberts spotted a bloke manning an open-air stall, attempting to get pedestrians to pause for a while and listen to his spiel.
Martha has no idea what he was selling as she decided not to stop after hearing the beginning of his pitch, broadcast in a loud Scouse accent.
“Good afternoon! I’m not a weirdo,” was what he said.
“I must admit,” says Martha. “I found that very reassuring. As reassuring as going on a blind date, and the first words from the chap you meet are: “Good evening, and let me put your mind at ease… I’m not a serial killer.”
Mind your language
OUR readers continue to be shocked and appalled by politics in all its disreputable and Machiavellian manifestations, especially the case of the Tory MP who was caught watching rude videos on his phone while in the House of Commons. He later claimed he only stumbled upon such mucky material because he was searching for tractor websites.
Reader Kenneth Watkins is struggling to decide how this scandal should be labelled.
“We can’t call it Tractor-gate,” he points out, “because that would be just a gate.”
Nature boy (not)
HEALTH conscious reader Jim Hamilton says: “I used to eat a lot of natural foods until I learned that most people die of natural causes.”
Thumb and thumber
THE six-year-old grandson of reader Laura Thornton boasted that at school he was learning a rhyme from Jack In The Beanstalk, which he proceeded to recite, just as he recalled it.
“Fee-fi-fo-fum,” he trilled, “I smell an English thumb.”
Laura was most intrigued. “I wonder what’s so distinctive about the whiff of an English person’s stumpy digit?” she muses, before adding: “Perhaps it can be bottled and sold as a luxury perfume. ‘English Thumb By Givenchy’ sounds wonderfully glam.”
Beefy bites back
A DIARY yarn about the land down under reminds Bryce Drummond of the occasion when English cricketer Sir Ian Botham was censured for puffing marijuana. As he was about to play Australia in a series of Test matches in their homeland, one Aussie politician opined that he should not be allowed to travel, or play, as he had broken the law.
Bolshie Botham hit back by saying he assumed breaking the law was one of the best ways to enter Oz.
Flame flummoxed
DISPIRITED reader Albert Thomas gets in touch to say: “I searched eBay for something to light the candles on my wife’s birthday cake, but got the response: ‘No matches found’.”
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