Fruity reply
MORE on street traders as Andy Cumming says: “I remember the old fruit shop in Candleriggs in Glasgow’s Merchant City, and Harry Angus shouting, ‘Two for a pound. Melons two for a pound’. I asked, ‘How do you know when melons are ripe?’ ‘When they are two for a pound,’ said Harry.”

Probably the splash headline
AND Grant Young includes newspaper sellers as he recalls: “Down the seafront at Ayr in the summer during my youth there was a newspaper vendor – probably The Evening Times – who used the catch phrase, ‘Ayr man drowns in fire’ to grab the attention of passers-by. There must have been a lot of such incendiary incidents in these days, 
as I recall him using this cry over several summers.”

Any port in a storm
FIRST World Problems continued. We mentioned the Kippen reader who wondered in which bin you recycle the wooden box the port bottle comes in. A Stirlingshire reader contacts us to say: “I don’t believe your Diary item. Everyone in Kippen knows that port boxes are ideal for firing up the wood-burning stove.”

Weighty problem
A READER swears he heard a young woman in a Glasgow pub tell her pal: “The pregnancy test confirmed my worst fears.
“I’m just fat. “

An Edinburgh welcome
NORMAN Ferguson in Edinburgh muses: “Spotted on a noticeboard outside an Edinburgh eaterie: ‘Family Friendly Until 8pm’
“Wonder what happens after 
that time. Do the staff wear scary masks and tell the kids Santa’s 
not real?”

A Paisley greeting
SAYS John Bannerman in Kilmaurs: “At the meeting of the Irvine Meadow Supporters Club, the speaker told of a player from Renfrewshire, who was an identical twin, and was once pushed with his brother in Paisley in his pram-for-two by their doting mother. A kindly shopper stopped to admire the bonny boys and asked, ‘My goodness, they are so alike. How do you tell them apart?’
“‘Balls,’ the mother replied. As the woman looked a bit shocked, the mother added, ‘This one bawls aw moarnin, and when HE stops, the ither yin starts’.”

Taking the lead
TODAY’S piece of whimsy comes from a Lenzie reader who emails: “Do you ever wonder if dogs think 
to themselves, ‘I’ve been towing this guy around by a rope for years. 
When is he going to learn to do this by himself?’”

Bit of a card
CANADIAN coffee-shop chain Tim Horton’s is opening its first British branch in Argyle Street, Glasgow. A reader wonders how many Rangers fans will sign up as regular customers as it enables them to be issued with a Timcard for special discounts.

Poor show
MY colleagues were discussing poverty in Glasgow and one of them declared: “We were so poor when 
I was growing up, we couldn’t even afford to pay attention.”