Panda to your Every Desire by Ken Smith Read Free Book Online

“Cornish Pastiche”.

    WE’VE mentioned the tanks of garra rufa fish at Glasgow’s Silverburn shopping centre where weary shoppers plunk their feet in to have a soothing massage from the tiny fish nibbling at their hard skin.
    Carol Foote, who was there the other day, tells us: “As I went over to take a look at the fish, a couple in their late sixties came walking up purposefully. The woman had her purse out – obviously intending to have a wee dip of her tootsies. Before she could say anything to the assistant, the husband said in a loud voice, ‘Can she have the tank with the piranhas?”’

    A WEST END socialite saw her local dry cleaners had a three for two offer on cleaning dresses and took a few along. Unfortunately, the small print said it did not apply to evening dresses, and she and the cleaning assistant got into an argument about what constituted an evening dress.
    As the assistant said her dresses did not qualify for the special offer as they looked like evening dresses, our reader indignantly asked how the assistant would define what dresses the offer applied to.
    In a convincing example of Glasgow logic, the assistant replied: “Dresses you would wear to Asda.”

    ANNIE McQUISTON, in the snowy wasteland of Glasgow’s south side during the worst of the winter weather, heard a woman coming out of a corner shop declaring: “I’m on the snow diet. Nae breid!”

    A READER claims he was in his corner shop when a fellow customer picked up a bag of coffee, peered at it, then asked: “When is this ‘best before’?” The shopkeeper replied: “Well, for me, it’s best before coming to work in the morning.”

    CAROL KNIGHT tells us that a neighbour in Partick was Christmas shopping and trying to find a T-shirt of the American rap artist Lil Wayne for her teenage son, but drew a blank.
    As she passed a skate shop, her eleven-year-old daughter suggested they try in there, so she went in with her daughter and asked: “Do you have a Lil Wayne T-shirt?”
    “No, they start at adult sizes,” said the assistant.

    GORDON PHILLIPS tells us about a regular in the Chestnuts Hotel in Ayr explaining that he was given a demonstration of a 3D television when he visited an electrical store, and was handed a pair of 3D glasses by the assistant.
    When the assistant came back to ask him what he thought of it, the chap said no way was he prepared to sit just two feet away from the telly.
    It was then gently explained to him that he could watch from a lot further back, once the security chain had been removed from the specs.

    THE PROBLEMS of delivery drivers on the frozen roads of Scotland reminded a Paisley reader of when he ran a shop in the town, and a German delivery driver came in to ask for directions to Clydebank. “For goodness sake, son,” said the customer behind him, “your faither found it easily enough in the dark.”

    CHRISTMAS sales buying can be a fraught business in miserable weather. One frustrated chap was heard explaining his annoyance at trekking around the shops to his girlfriend: “So how would you like it if I took you into eight pubs one after the other and didn’t buy you a drink in any of them, before finally going back to the first one we were in and getting a drink there?”

    AND A shopper heading to Silverburn on Glasgow’s south side claimed: “I was stuck in traffic for so long even the sat nav was asking, ‘Are we nearly there yet?”’

    A READER sees the BBC headline “Swine flu vaccine stock released” and tells us: “I don’t know about you, but I think I’ll just stick to my usual beef or vegetable ones.”

    AFTER our story about the B&Q customer bamboozling the Polish member of staff by asking for “a hing tae hing hings oan” readers recall other such feats of linguistics.
    There was the foreign tourist asking for the bus to Ayr at Buchanan Bus Station and the driver pointing to another stance and replying: “’Err Ayr ower err.”
    And of course the