Poles apart

In the annals of literature there are many tragic tales involving fragile dreams being dashed upon the hard rock of experience.

Anna Karenina and her unfortunate rendezvous with a set of train tracks. Jay Gatsby brought low by high society.

Yet neither of those classic narratives so poignantly describes the precipitous plummet from hope to desperation as the following…

“I was supposed to get some new clothes poles cemented in the garden,” says reader Iain McDermid. “But the firm didn’t turn up. Talk about being hung out to dry.”

Feisty family feud

Listening to her teenage daughters arguing, reader Nicola Munro overheard the younger sibling snip. “You’re so patronising!”

Her sister merely smirked, then said: “That’s a pretty big word for you.”

Talking balls

Football teams with curious names, continued. Alan Wallace reveals that his medical school footy team were named The Legionnaires 11 after an outbreak of Legionnaires disease at Glasgow Royal Infirmary at the time.

He adds: “We played in a league that included a team of pharmacists named Aspirin Villa and another very unfit team called Pathetico Madrid.”

Kitchen confidential

The creative wife of reader Nick Shaw decided to make a trifle instead of buying one of those shop-bought concoctions.

After a few hours of struggle and strife in the kitchen she emerged looking more than a mite exasperated.

She had managed to make the trifle, though it was more of a struggle than she foresaw.

“I’ve no idea why people use the phrase a mere trifle,” she harrumphed. “There’s nothing mere about a trifle. A mere jelly… now that I could understand.”

Vlad the bad

An inspirational thought from reader Jack Millar, who gives the following advice: “Always believe in yourself. And remember, it’s never too late to start over. Vlad the Impaler didn’t even start impaling people until his mid-30s.”

Night moves

English teacher Laura Ellen used to teach in Glasgow’s east end where one of her pupils told her about a strange experience he had the evening before, when he had been watching a TV programme for the first time, then suddenly he had the sensation that he had watched it before.

“Sounds like déjà vu,” said Laura.

“Aye, but it happened about 10pm,” said the youth. “So it couldnae be déjà vu. Must have been night ja vu.”

Lethargic leapers

Curious reader Leah Shaw has been pondering the bouncy marsupials of Oz, which leads her to ask: “Would you call a lazy kangaroo a pouch potato?”