Bit of a card

THE Herald reported that the Edinburgh Fringe will be the first festival to allow folk to use contactless technology on their credit and debit cards in order to tip street performers because of the reduction in people carrying cash. Not everyone though is happy with contactless payments. As a Liam Forrest revealed on social media yesterday: "Lost my bank card last night and some dafty's just used the contactless at Crown Stores. Do me a favour mate, bring me a wee tin of Irn-Bru, I've got some hangover."

Hard to swallow

BUS tours continued. Says Willie Mclean in Dumbarton: "Some years ago while on a bus tour in Dublin, we were passing the Guinness Brewery and the hostess told us the story about Arthur Guinness. He married his wife Olivia in 1761 and they had 21 children. Sadly only 10 survived to adulthood. We were told that Olivia was hard of hearing and when retiring at night Arthur would say, 'Are we going to sleep or what?' Olivia would frequently reply, 'What?' The rest is history."

Choked

AS TV comedy series Dad's Army celebrates its 50th anniversary, surviving cast member Ian Lavender, who played Private Pike, ruefully revealed in the Radio Times that when he did a one-man show he would bring out the scarf that Pike frequently wore on the series and explained: "The scarf got a round of applause. I have to work an hour just to get a round of applause, but I just bring the scarf out and it gets one straightaway.”

Bottled it

TODAY'S point to ponder comes from Gary Rivers who says: "Milk delivery 25 years ago was essentially a subscription service offering products with recyclable/reusable packaging, delivered by electric vehicles. Part of me thinks that if a techie firm were to have proposed this same idea today people would think it was incredible."

Took the plunge

WE mentioned folk returning from holidays to discover Glasgow was hotter and sunnier than the place they had been to. But as Mike Ritchie on the south side says: "Just back from a smashing, two weeks’ holiday with my wife and son in a lovely, hillside villa in Spain.

Bumped into a chum who asked if it wasn’t annoying being abroad when the weather here had been so nice.

"I told him no, as I don’t have a swimming pool in my garden at home, a dip in the sea wouldn’t cause sensitive parts of my anatomy severe shock and, if I had been at home, I would have been working. 'Fair enough,' he agreed."

Doing a runner

HAVE you seen those folk on social media who go on about where they have run that day, even putting in a map? A reader heard a chap on the train into Glasgow tell his pal: "The best part about these punters posting their regular running routes is it makes it easier to avoid them."

Hard hitter

AS others see us. Sports reporter Cathay Kelly in Toronto's Globe and Mail was writing about The Open last week at Carnoustie and described the course thus: "They’ve been playing on that coastal corner of Scotland since the 1500s. It may also be the last time they updated the course. Burnt out, bunkers like bomb craters, and as windswept as the deck of an ocean trawler – Carnoustie looks more like a well-manicured landfill than a golf shrine."

But before we get too indignant, Cathay went on to say it was one of the best Open's ever, so that's alright then.