Buzzing

READER David Liddell on Glasgow's south side tells us that the Brazilian magazine Veja had a cracking apology last week which translated to: "Contrary to what the article said, the Green candidate for the Presidency, Eduardo Jorge, did not say that among his hobbies was ‘watching Toy Story’. He said he enjoyed ‘reading Tolstoy’, the Russian author of classics Anna Karenina and War and Peace."

Vouch for that

CONCERNS grow about the department store John Lewis because of plummeting profits. Time to rally round surely as the staff are the most helpful out there in Retail Land. Anyway, Lucy Freeman sums up the helpfulness of John Lewis staff with this story which unfolded in front of her: "Lady in John Lewis using voucher to buy lingerie set with leather and lace strappy bits. 'I'm not sure this was what work expected me to buy with my leaving present,' she said. The JL cashier looks over half-moon glasses. 'Tell them it was a candle,' she says."

Mind the gap

WE asked for your Freshers' Week stories and Derek Miller in Torrance confides: "A newly found friend and I were wandering around the hallowed ground of Glasgow University during our Freshers' Week in 1983, when we happened upon the geology building, en route to Ashton Lane. As we stood gazing at the iconic stone monument outside the main door, a couple of experienced students told us that it was tradition for Freshers to walk around the stone edifice and through its gap three times. We earnestly followed in the footsteps of our scholarly forebears only to find the mature geologists wetting themselves at our naivety.

"A consoling pint of Furstenberg in The Chip was required to take away our humiliation."

Nun better

TALES of thinking you know someone who turns out to be famous - says David Martin: "I was standing in the bar of Dundee's DCA several years ago when someone I recognised came up to order drinks for his company. As he smiled, I asked how he was doing and what brought him there, as I knew I knew him from somewhere else. 'I'm here for the film,' he replied. 'Oh, the Magdalene Sisters?', I said, 'I've heard it's good.' 'Aye, me an'a,' replied, it turns out, Peter Mullan, who wrote and directed it.

Changes

EXCITEMENT continues in Dundee following the weekend opening of the Victoria and Albert design museum. Already folk are wondering what will be the next touring exhibition to take the place of the current temporary exhibition about ocean liners. The museum's director of programme, Sophie McKinlay, says everyone in Dundee seems to have an opinion on what should come next. As she told our colleague Teddy Jamieson: “I took my son to A&E the other day and as we were leaving the consultant said, ‘Your son’s OK, but what about David Bowie?'" It was the suggestion that the V&A's touring show about David Bowie should come to Dundee next, so if it happens, a top doc in Dundee may start claiming the credit.

Closed book

SAD to hear of the death of Sir William Kerr Fraser, onetime head of the Scottish Office and later Glasgow University. I am sure many readers can identify with Sir William who was once asked in a Herald interview who his heroes were from novels he had read. He replied that while some people were good at retaining heroes from books, he read for recreation in the same sense that he went for a walk. Unless it was outstanding he tended to forget about it afterwards.