Hat trick

MORE on what you did at school, but never since. Says Derek McKay: “I haven’t made a hat out of a poly bag to get home in the rain since leaving school. If the 5p levy was about in the 80s, half of Coatbridge would have been riddled with pleurisy.”

Corny answer

PRIME Minister Theresa May was asked on ITN what was the naughtiest thing she had ever done, and after much humming and hawing said running through a wheat field with her pals which left the farmer not best pleased.

“So she didn’t plump instead for calling an election that nobody wanted?” asks a reader.

Teething problems

GROWING old continued. A Renfrewshire reader tells us about a pal who fell heavily on his back while out hill-walking - a pursuit he had taken up on his retirement. Moving ever so slowly in case he had done himself a serious injury he reached round to check for damages - and pulled out his broken dentures from his back pocket.

All Greek to him

A WEST end reader in a crowded bar off Byres Road at the weekend was half-listening to a chap trying to impress a woman at the bar. Our reader did smile though when the woman leaned forward, patted the chap on the back of his hand, and told him: “Oh sweetie. If you have to tell people you’re an alpha male, you’re not.”

On the defensive

CONGRATULATIONS to advocate Donald Findlay for his incisive questioning of witnesses that helped Derek Whyte achieve a not guilty verdict in his trial over the ownership of Rangers.

A fan phones to tell us: “Sign Findlay! It’s quite clear he’s a world-class defender - just what Rangers need.”

Horsing around

THE Herald’s archive pictures of police horses remind horse expert Arthur Greenan in East Linton of when the City of Edinburgh Police had their stables beside a brewery. It was common for the officers to fetch some beer from next door as it helped put a shine on the horses’ coats when you brushed it in.

One officer, says Arthur, was returned to pounding the beat when he was adjudged to be drunk on duty after sampling too much of the beer himself. What made the crime worse was that his horse had lapped it up as well and was as tipsy as his rider.

Down Ayrshire way

THE growing concerns that foreign doctors are leaving the NHS because of Brexit reminds us of the Ayrshire reader who swears that a newly arrived Australian doctor at Crosshouse Hospital looked at a patient’s notes which stated that he lived in squalor and cheerfully asked: “Tell me mate, I’m new to these parts - is that far from Kilmarnock?”

Fur goodness sake

AN Edinburgh reader swears to us he was in his local coffee shop where a young woman rushed in to join her pals and told them: “Sorry I’m late. I tripped over my cat and had to stroke him for twenty minutes.”