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

to the dole office regularly, where he insisted that the only suitable position would be as first violinist in a concert orchestra. Then one day the weary dole officer simply smiled and handed him a card with an address where he was told to report.
    “I didn’t see him for some months before visiting the Garden Festival. On entering the catering hall, I was amazed to see our man for the first time ever in a suit and black tie, sitting in the front row of the band and sawing his fiddle in a completely scunnered manner, having to cope with six months of gainful employment.”

    GLASGOW Garden Festival continued. Airdrie lawyer Frank Nicol recalls that his then student son had a temporary job on the trams running at the festival.
    At the same time Frank received an invitation to a pretentious Glasgow West End party where a posh lady asked Frank what his son did for a living. “He’s a conductor,” replied Frank.
    “Has he ever met Andre Previn?” she gushed.

    OUR STORIES about airplane seating arrangements remind Wendy Hunter in San Francisco: “I worked for the now defunct Highland Express Airlines at Prestwick. After seating was completed in a full economy class, my colleague noticed a poor wee man doing his best to get comfortable while being squashed and unable to use his armrest due to a hugely overweight woman in the seat next to him.
    “My well-meaning colleague discreetly told him there was a spare seat in first class and would he like to move to it. The passenger replied that, no, he would just stay next to his wife.”

    TALKING of anniversaries, sadly it is fifty years since England beat Scotland 9–3 at Wembley. Years later player Bobby Shearer of Rangers was able to joke: “England cheated. They used an orange ball which goalie Frank Haffey of Celtic refused to go near, and which neither Eric Caldow nor I would kick.”

    GLASGOW Garden Festival continued. The festival introduced Glaswegians to foreign influences. David Green recalls: “I was with a few friends in the pub on the festival site. My mate George sees a sign stating ‘Frankfurters £1’. So he then goes up to the bar and asks for a pint of Frankfurters.”

    TIME to end our Garden Festival tales with reader Ian Clark reminding us of the time of the festival closing, and the city looking forward to the next big thing, the European City of Culture. On the wall of the now disused Garden Festival site, someone had spray-painted: “F*** the Garden Festival. I’m off to the theatre.”

    WE ASKED for your Scottish wedding stories, and Stuart Miller tells us of a wedding in one of Scotland’s more magnificent churches where the staff announced that there had been a mix-up, the organist had been double booked and couldn’t come, but there was a piano if anyone could play it.
    Eventually the couple went up the aisle to an older woman amongst the guests who could play the only religious song she knew, “Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus”, with two fingers.
    “The magnificence was muted,” says Stuart.

    SCOTTISH weddings, and Richard Gault tells us: “When I had a July wedding in Airdrie, we walked the short distance to the hotel from the church just as the Orange March was coming up the street.
    “My brother-in-law told my granny from Lossiemouth, where they don’t have such things, that because I was so popular, the town band came out for my wedding. I never did find out if she ever learned the truth.”

    TALKING of Airdrie, local chap Patrick Rolink, doing a stand-up turn at a fundraiser for George Galloway’s Coalition Against the Cuts in Glasgow, said his grandfather had been a lifelong Airdrie supporter, and when he died, the family scattered his ashes over the pitch’s centre circle.
    “The ground was later sold and Safeways built a supermarket on it,” added Patrick. “We do get some funny looks when we go back every year and leave flowers beside the fish counter.”

    INCIDENTALLY, Patrick is one of the fuller-figure comedians