Crumbs!

THE Herald news story suggesting there may be a teachers' strike in Scotland over pay reminds us of a previous industrial dispute when a small number of teachers at a Glasgow school turned up for work as they were not members of the main teaching union, the EIS. What really annoyed the EIS members when they returned the next day was that the blacklegs had eaten all the biscuits in the staffroom.

Green with envy

NOSTALGIA alert! We are well down memory lane as Ada McDonald tells us, following our stories about pupils giving gifts to teachers, "My aunt's friend was a primary teacher in Glasgow's Tradeston area in the 1940s. Money was in short supply, but the children used to bring her small gifts – an apple, a scone or a sweet were popular gifts. One wee boy could not quite rise to that standard but he was determined to bring something. He arrived one day with something soggy in a paper bag. 'What’s this you’ve brought me, Billy?' 'Please, miss, it’s the peas oot o’ ma soup'."

Panting

STAND-UP Andrew Bird, who recently supported Michael McIntyre on tour, is bringing his own show to the Glasgow Stand club in February. Andrew, who admits he can be a bit stingy, realised that his wife thought the same about him when she paraded in front of him in new underwear she had bought and told him: "I'll tell you something that will really turn you on. They were reduced."

No boundaries

POSH west-enders, continued. Says former Dundee MP Jim McGovern: "My Dad is Glaswegian, my Mum Dundonian and I was born in Glasgow. My Mum would take us to visit our Dundee family during school holidays. I can still remember her saying to my Dundee Granny and Aunties, 'Yes, we’re still in North Kelvinside.' I don’t know the boundaries of North Kelvinside, but I do know we stayed in a ‘room and kitchen’ one up in a tenement on Maryhill Road. Could my Mum have been gilding the lily a wee bit?"

Flash

WHAT children say, says Arthur Greenan in East Linton: "My eleven-year-old daughter’s class had Scottish country dancing on their last day at primary school. 'What dance were you taught?' I asked. She said it was called The Flashing White Policeman. I'm assuming The Dashing White Sergeant."

Hair-raising

AND children can mess with you in other ways. Says journalist Alan Beattie, working in Brussels: "Turns out I spent half of yesterday morning in the office sporting a pink hair-clip on the top of my head, put there by three-year-old daughter for comedy value, and forgotten. Colleagues too polite to mention it 'because it might have been a religious thing'."

Hard to swallow

VETERAN STV political broadcaster Bernard Ponsonby has been awarded a National Union of Journalists gold badge for his services to the union. The event was attended by a number of journalism students, one of whom asked what had attracted him to the profession. "Drink!" replied Bernard, who then elaborated: "I remember meeting up with some journalists who seemed to be having a good time, were well paid and didn't do much work. And I thought, that's the job for me."

He was only kidding of course, weren't you Bernard?

No exit strategy

AS the Tory Brexiteers dither, Bruce Skivington sums it up: "They say Jacob Rees-Mogg is a man of letters – just not 48 letters."