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Sometimes you just don't have the time or the opportunity to read out an email in all its glory and stylishness. Here's an example, provoked by stories of heating tins of shoe polish in order to get the last iota of goodness out of them...

Tam son,

Can confirm that post war we always heated the remains of any polish in shoe polish tins the whole idea is to get the most out of it - see us see frugal. Big tip always, always take the lid off first.

On the subject of "cost effective" ideas a cousin of mine fractured the middle part of her favourite pair of specs and made a splint using two broken matchsticks and some cellotape. I thought it didn't do her image any good or in today's lingo she didn't look too cool. So being a Jack of all trades I said I would fix it for her. My idea was to weld it together using "a bit of heat"...

I started with a matches but they didn't have enough heat to melt the plastic bridge between the eye rims. So undaunted I asked if I could borrow her lighter. I asked her to hold the two sides of the specs so the broken bridge in the middle just touched nicely together as I wanted the weld to be almost invisible (she was going to the Locarno dance hall in Glasgow that night for the first time).

Well unbeknown to moi she had turned the wick on the lighter up the last time she had used it to light the recalcitrant gas fire and as soon as I flicked the button, up shot this blue and orange flame like a jet from . Within seconds the bridge was on fire, acrid black smoke was pouring out, we were both coughing, the budgie was going berserk running up and down it's perch in a very agitated fashion, and almost immediately the rims on the glasses started to melt, then one of the lenses fell out!

What could I say. She was blind as a bat without her specs but she didn't want to miss her first night at the dancin so like a gentleman I gave her a loan of my NHS specs, you know the type round with wire rims and bendy wire legs - worst of all because I had a "lazy" eye I had the usual NHS solution of elastoplast stuck over the lens over my good eye (to encourage the lazy eye to work).

Did she get a date or as it was then known a "lumber" at the Lorcano, that night?

Surprisingly she didn't but we will never know whether my efforts to repair her favourite specs had anything to do with that.

Big Saul from Eaglesham

Oh remind me to tell you some time about the exploding mince episode in Aviemore.

Hear Tom's top tales on the Tom Morton Show, Mon-Fri 1405-1600.