B&Q

[exlkrs]

I do have a somewhat active and twisted sense of humour. I am also blessed with being capable of keeping a straight face as I'm spouting a load of absolute rubbish and make it believable. So, I enjoyed telling the youngster on the checkout at B&Q that it stood for Brooms and Quillets, and it had started trading in such hardware back in the fifteenth century. They totally swallowed it!!

[Dave the rave]

Tut tut

[Keith Bennett]

Back in the distant mists of time I used to have a small artists' materials shop specialising in the best of all manufacturers, Windsor & Newton. They were the only company selling real sponges (used by water colour artists to blot excess paint in, say, a sky where light clouds were required - they'd lay a blue wash down and then blot areas out to reveal the white paper beneath and thus create the clouds).

One day a chap came in and spotted my sponges, asking what they were for (he thought they were just for soaking up spilled paint - not at that price they weren't).

You'd have been proud of me, Chris, as I solemnly informed him that, as real sponges, they had to be "fed" in salt water once a week to keep them alive. Far as I know, he's still doing it . . .

[austina40sam]

Made my day Chris!