Gordon off

AS speculation continues over Gordon Strachan's future as Scotland manager we are reminded of Gordon's playing days when he was capped for Scotland when Jock Stein was manager. He was unhappy at being substituted against France, and sitting in the dugout with Stein and the other substitutes while the game continued, he remarked: "What a poor game this is."

Jock heard him and replied: "Aye, but it's got a lot better since you came off."

One swallow

A CHAP whose wine company organises tasting sessions tells us he had set up in a Glasgow hotel where a variety of wines were set out. A local invitee picked up the first glass, swallowed it in a oner, and announced: "Aye that's wine. I think I'm a natural at this wine tasting malarkey."

Egging them on

WE asked for your curry stories to make National Curry Week and Al Farrer in Saltcoats remarks: "Several years ago I was dining in my local Indian with a few friends. One of them ordered the chicken curry with boiled eggs. With much speculation we eagerly awaited to find out which would come first - the chicken or the egg.

"The answer was of course the rice."

Hand it to them

BILL Lothian was on a cruise where the daily guide to events announced a "Beginners' Dance Class" on which was printed below the instructions that those taking part should "sanitise hands between partners" - presumably a concern about an on-board outbreak of novovirus. Says Bill: "We can think of a few less salubrious establishments on dry land back in the day that could have benefited from that instruction."

A closed book

EVER buy a book on-line and a few days later the company asks you to review it? Thriller writer Simon Kernick commented at the weekend: "Just received a mental one-star review. It stated, 'I don't recall buying or reading this one. The cover doesn't ring any bells'."

Sofa so good

AN AYRSHIRE reader heard a chap in his local at the weekend discussing fitness and telling his pal: "I think going to the gym is never going to happen for me. I was so lazy yesterday afternoon that I bought a movie on Sky on-line even though I had it on DVD but couldn't be bothered going in to the other room to get it."

High hoe

POSTCARDS continued. Says Arthur Greenan in East Linton: "I bought a black-and-white postcard of monks marching in a line on their way to single turnips at Sancta Maria Abbey farm at Garvald in East Lothian. Each had a long handled hoe across their shoulder and were clad in the old habit of a white cassock overlaid with a black bib and a large peaked hood.

"I enlarged the postcard and entered it into the photo section at Garvald Flower Show with the caption 'Ku Klux Klan, Garvald Branch.'

"The douce ladies of the committee withdrew it not wanting to offend the monks up the hill. However the Lord Abbot arrived and I showed him the disqualified photo. He fell about laughing and asked if he could hang it in the refectory in the abbey."

Weighed on his mind

WE thought the holiday stories had dried up after the summer, but Jim Nicol in Lenzie says: "On a tour of Japan, my wife and I took a trip to Miyajima where a cable car took visitors to a mountain-top shrine. Each cable car took eight passengers but they closed the doors behind us with only five in the car.

"My wife thought that as we were tourists they wanted to give us more room to see the sights. I suggested it was more likely that they thought the two of us weighted the same as five Japanese folk."