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

suddenly stopped and said: “Oh, you asked me for a Shrek outfit, didn’t you? Not a sex outfit.”

    A READER feels the most ironic thing he has seen was the chap in an East End of Glasgow Asda store at the weekend who bought forty fags and a bottle of vodka … and then produced a “Bag for Life” to put them in.

    A RENFREWSHIRE reader swears he was in his local supermarket when the check-out girl asked the pensioner in front of him: “Would you like help with your packing?” and the auld fella replied: “That would be great – but how did you know I was going on holiday?”

7.
Drinking In Moderation
    Scotland’s bars are under pressure from rising prices and the smoking ban. Hopefully some of these stories will remind people why a pint and a blether are still a good thing.

    GLASGOW barmen – amongst the best in the world, we reckon. Scott Barclay in Hamilton tells us about friends John and Claire visiting from Colorado who popped in to Glasgow’s esteemed Horseshoe Bar, where Claire asked for a gin and Slimline tonic.
    The barman looked at his shelves before telling her: “We only have full-fat, hen. Away and run round the block, and I’ll watch your drink.”

    A TOPER in the Highlands tells us the locals have nicknamed their local pub the Moderation.
    That way they can all tell their doctors that they only drink in moderation.

    KENNY REID was watching Horizon on the telly and noted that one of the scientists on the programme was called Beau Lotto, and thought to himself: “Surely that’s what much of Scotland gets on a Friday night?”

    A LANARKSHIRE reader tells us there is an old fella in his local pub every day doing his newspaper crossword. Unwary newcomers occasionally ask if he needs any help. Invariably he replies: “Four letter word, beginning with ‘P’, a measurement of liquid.”
    “Pint?” replies the visitor.
    “Thanks, I’ll have a Tennent’s,” the pensioner tells them.

    SAYS Rod Macdonald: “When I first came to Glasgow I was having a drink in the Park Bar with two friends. One of them insisted that we go to the Pot Still because they had hundreds of different bottles of whisky. He eventually persuaded us to get a taxi there, and I had a pint of lager, my other mate had a vodka and he had a Bacardi and coke.”

    BILL McMILLAN of Linlithgow tells us: “The landlord of a pub beside a well-known Glasgow dog track told me that race nights were his busiest evenings when the pub was full with punters and dog-owners with their dugs. On one evening the door opened and a regular whom he had previously barred asked if the ban was still in place. When he was told it was, his reaction to the unwelcome news was to tip out three live rabbits he was carrying in a bag into the centre of the pub and make a hasty retreat.”

    THE REDOUBTABLE entertainer Andy Cameron tells us, and who are we to doubt him: “A blonde brassy barmaid in Maryhill was stunned at the good looks of a tall handsome stranger who walked in, and as she served him his pint she says, ‘Hivnae seen you in here afore – jist moved intae the area like?’
    “‘No,’ says the tall fella, ‘I live round the corner, but I’ve been away for twenty years and I’ve just come back.’
    “‘Oh,’ she giggles, ‘a merchant seaman are you?’
    “‘No, I’ve been in prison for murdering my wife and her mother.’
    “The stunned silence round the bar was only broken by the barmaid asking, ‘Oh, on yer own then?”’

    AND AN honourable mention to Frank O’Donnell in Fife, who recounts: “A local character in Auchterarder ordered a hawf and a hawf, announcing to the barman that he was sixty-two today.
    “The barman said, ‘Have that one on me.’ Thanking the barman for his generosity, he then proceeded to inform the bar that next week he was two to ten.”

    HELEN MAXWELL tells us: “The George Hotel in Moniaive is very old and the public bar has flagstones on the floor.
    “Years ago when an inspector came from