Lost its sparkle

WELL, did you enjoy Guy Fawkes Night last night? We always liked the description by a reader who told us: "Experience the anticlimax of a back garden firework display by setting fire to your wallet and throwing it over a shed."

Spiced up

SO the Spice Girls are going back on tour next year with a concert at Murrayfield included in the shows. Football fans will appreciate Andy Dewar's observation: "Scottish football chiefs originally wanted the Spice Girls reunion to be at Hampden on June 22 next year, the same day P!nk is due to play the national stadium."

Chucking it

AND talking of football, the fans' website Pie and Bovril commented after Rangers striker Alfredo Morelos was hit by a coin when the club beat St Mirren this week: "Lifetime bans for any St Mirren fan caught chucking a coin. That's a fairly tempting offer at the moment to be fair."

Bullseye

OUR tales of acerbic Scottish waitresses remind Ian Cooper in Bearsden: "Years ago in The Country Club at Strathblane, a group of rather loud American golfing visitors was heavily criticising local amenities, much to the annoyance of the other imbibers. The wee Glesca drinks waitress eventually had had enough and in a voice for all to hear exploded with, 'Nae wunner thae Indians is aye firin arras at youse'. The Americans did not understand the narration but realised that they were the butt of the joke and hurriedly left."

Barking

ONLY in Glasgow's west end, we suspect. Says David Donaldson: "The woman in front of me at the Waitrose checkout was buying two bags of frozen Quorn nuggets in a crispy batter when the cashier pointed out that one of the bags had split open. 'Oh that's all right' said the woman, 'They're for the dog'."

We just wonder how she knew it was a vegetarian.

Off button

SAD to hear of the death of former Herald columnist and broadcaster Kenneth Roy who went on to set up the always challenging but always readable Scottish Review. Once writing about why he left BBC Scotland in the Review, Kenneth stated: "One day, in the lavatory at the end of the corridor, I watched one of my colleagues – a nice man in early middle age – popping pills to control his stress. A year later he was dead. That might have been a catalyst: the realisation that, if there were causes worth dying for, Reporting Scotland wasn't one of them."

Wordy

TODAY'S piece of daftness comes from a reader who emails: "I bought a new thesaurus today. It's nothing to write house about."

Off the rails

OH, we are so far down memory lane with this gag. After our story about train toilets, Archie Burleigh tells us: "Train users used to be told not to use the toilets while stopped at a station. The story was told about the retired couple who had set up home in a couple of rail carriages in a siding.

"Their kids arrived for a visit and noticed that grandpa had his shoulder to one of the buffers and was pushing the carriages along the line. His son ran over to enquire, 'What's up dad?' He replied, 'Give me a hand son, your mothers on the loo'."

That's the spirit

IT'S the American mid-term elections, and a reader in the States tells us the little-known story that when Abraham Lincoln stood for the Senate against a Stephen Douglas, Douglas criticised Lincoln for having worked as a whisky retailer. Lincoln replied, 'Yes, it's true that the first time I saw Judge Douglas I was selling whisky – he was my customer."