Readers’ Letters

Mum’s doorbell was driving her crazy

My mother was sitting at home one afternoon when her doorbell rang.

I say doorbell, but it isn’t really a bell. It’s one of those old-fashioned types that the caller turns and it rattles rather than rings.

She got up to answer it but there was nobody there. She sat down again for five minutes and it rang again.

Up she got, but once again there was nobody at the door. When it happened for a fourth time she was at her wits’ end.

“Wait ’til I get on to that school,” she angrily told me on the phone, blaming the local children for ringing the bell and running away.

Kept ringing

Her bell kept ringing next morning, too, and it was driving her round the bend, so I went round to visit and as we were sitting having a cup of tea, she jumped up.

“There you are — you go,” she said. “You’ll maybe get there before they run away.”

“But I didn’t hear the bell,” I said. She looked at me with a puzzled expression just as I picked up a tin of chocolate raisins that had been sitting on her shoogly coffee table.

“Is this what you’ve been hearing?” 

I asked, shaking the tin. “Yes,” she said. “Oh no, I feel so silly!”

Turns out she’d been rattling the tin — which I must admit did sound a bit like the front doorbell — every time she reached for her book, glasses or TV remote control.

Bob Hughes, Glasgow.

My late mum said when I had my hair bleached I looked like Scotland’s favourite laddie, Oor Wullie. She asked me to sit on her bucket so she could take this picture and we forgot all about it until my dad came across it recently. Dad always gets your paper so it would be a great surprise for him.

Jay J. Potts, Jarrow, Tyne & Wear.

Indecisive

MY FRIEND worked in a supermarket bakery. Every week without fail the same customer came in and squeezed every loaf of bread on display. One day she eventually chose a large crusty loaf, asked for it to be sliced and went away. About 10 minutes later she put it back on the shelf and took an unsliced loaf, but again after a few minutes, she brought that back. The baker politely asked if she had a problem with the bread. “Oh, no,” she said, “I’ve decided to have a malt loaf instead.”

Mrs J. Bourne, Forsbrook, Staffs.

Great read

I always look forward to Sundays, as the Post is always a great read and a real breath of home. It’s almost 30 years since I reluctantly left Scotland for work. As my Dad used to say, “You canna eat scenery”. I like to keep in touch with the land of my birth and the Post helps. Thanks for a great paper.

Mrs M. Crawford, Thornton-Cleveleys.

My only gripe about your paper is there isn’t a Sunday Post every day! It’s a real tonic.

Margaret Sloan, Maghull.

Classic

He may be 83 years young, but what a performance Tony Bennett gave at the Royal Concert Hall recently. The songs were classic after classic and stories about Sinatra and Hope made this an evening to remember. He even sang Fly Me To The Moon with the microphone turned off.

R. Dennis, Carmunnock.

“Not my problem”

A friend witnessed a lorry reversing into a parked car at her work. Knowing the car was her supervisor’s, she told her. “Why tell me? It’s not my problem,” barked her boss. It was a more subdued lady who walked out to the car park after being told, “because it’s your car”!

John McDonald, Kirkcaldy.

A Piece of My Mind

I READ Steven Bowron’s piece “Why no-one wants to talk posh any more” with sheer disbelief and anger.
The standard of both written and spoken language in this country are generally quite pathetic and I’m at a loss to understand why Peter Moody thinks he’s improving anyone’s communication skills by teaching them how not to speak properly!
There’s a whole generation of people today who’ve suffered from the “trendies” who were in education in the ’70s and decided that spelling, grammar and pronunciation were unimportant and didn’t need to be taught. What a mess they have created!
Instead of encouraging this inanity, why doesn’t Peter Moody try to promote correct use of language? Is it because his own education lacked the proper grounding in basic English and grammar?
Let’s have no more of this laziness and claptrap and get some sense back into the way we speak and write, before we completely lose our ability to be understood.

Mrs D. Radin, Perth.

© All copyright D.C. Thomson & Co. Ltd., 2010