Blethers, eh?

It was very odd. There we were, in the Burns centre (we're talking the poet, not injury here) in Alloway, seeking lunch and refuge from a vile day outside. The fact that a multitude of ancients seemed to have had the same idea didn't deter us; we pushed two tables together (we were four) and all was well. But on the way out, one of our number noticed a sign outside a room off the entrance hall. "Once in ten year sale". And what a bizarre collection of stuff, the kind of collection that would make a church bric-a-brac stall look positively homogenous. Red transparent plastic stacking chairs. Several small round tables as well as a couple of large ones. Crockery. Easy chairs in strange colours. A couple of sofas, ditto.

And blethers. One of three plaques of wooden letters mounted on perspex sheets, presumably for mounting on a wall, it called to me across the room. The final "s" was broken, but I have to confess something.

Had it not been mounted, had the letters been loose for random placement, I would have yielded and bought the thing.

Sad, eh?