THE death of Real Madrid legend Alfredo di Stefano reminds Ronald Arthur of being on holiday on Majorca when he was eight and kicking a ball about the pool area with another young lad.

Says Ronald: "Eventually Daddy came to take his son for lunch. He started playing with the ball. He was like a circus juggler, keeping the ball up with his feet, thighs, head and trapping the ball behind his neck.

"I discovered he was di Stefano, and in broken English he said to me, 'Hampden Park, wind and rain'."

Losing the place

A READER on a train into Glasgow was amused by the teenage lad sitting opposite who told his pal: "I couldn't find my phone this morning and my mum said, 'You can't really care for it if you lose it so easily'. So I reminded her about the time she lost me in Tesco's."

Burst couch

WE asked for two words to sum up the mawkish uniform for the Scottish team in the Commonwealth Games, and a reader in Rhu says: "Not in two words, but I love the comment of a letter-writing comrade in the Communist Morning Star who wrote, 'Frankly, one would not do that to a couch'."

Going downhill

JIM Morrison tells us about a friend visiting Partick Bowling club who parked his car on a steep hill.

Says Jim: "When he returned after playing bowls he found another car parked against his front bumper. He got in his car and, looking over his left shoulder, slowly reversed back till he was almost against the car behind. On turning round he discovered the car in front had come with him and sandwiched him between the two cars as it had been left with no brakes on.

"He had to walk up several closes chapping doors until he found the owner, making him an hour late to meet his wife who was rather sceptical of his explanation."

Any other strange excuses for being late?

Load of bull

RON Beaton in Dunblane reads in The Herald that: "A Spanish man was gored in the encierro" during the Pamplona bull run, and hopes that the encierro is not in the area below the waist and above the knees.

Tied up

OUR story about the sales rep putting a barbecue on his company fuel card reminds Allan Boyd in Clarkston: "There was the chap who started a new sales job and claimed for two shirts and two ties on his first week's expenses. His boss told him to remove them as the company wasn't going to pay for them.

"The next week his boss signed his expenses and said, 'I'm glad to see there's no shirts and ties this week.' 'Ah,' said the sales rep, 'they're there, you just can't see them'."

Domestic powers

THE emergency powers being rushed through parliament to allow the police access to phone records was being discussed in a Glasgow pub last night where one toper commented: "I'm less bothered about the police seeing my text messages than the wife."