WE encourage readers to reminisce, but goodness, Arthur Greenan in East Linton sounds as if he stepped out the pages of Sunset Song. 

 

Our toilet tales remind him: "Harry Henderson on his farm inTranent told his wee brother and I that he needed a hessian sack and a bucket of snow. We tiptoed into the toilet just inside the farmhouse door. The hessian bag was placed across the toilet and held by the seat. The snow was piled up on the sack. We then removed the electric light bulb. The elderly maid, Sarah, nipped into the toilet and plonked her bare bum down into the snow.

"We heard her terrified screams from the stable."

A READER tells us he was in a taxi queue in Glasgow when the tipsy girl behind him told her pal that her boyfriend wasn't answering his phone, so she would leave a message. She then announced down her phone: "Just wanted to tell you, it's now officially too late to break up with me before Valentine's Day."

WE thought folk in Edinburgh were too diffident to queue for anything, so it was good to see a queue in Dundas Street the other night at the Scottish Gallery for an exhibition of photographs by David Eustace, who was a prison officer at Glasgow's Barlinnie before he became a snapper to the stars in New York. We thought it was quite witty of a passer-by who saw the 100-plus queue and remarked: "It's a bit late for the Jenners January sale, isn't it?"

THE LITERARY world is excited that To Kill A Mockingbird author Harper Lee is releasing another novel after all these years. We like however the response of actor David Schneider who imagined the reaction of someone else in the news. "Harper Lee, waiting 55 years before publishing? That's nothing!" - Sir John Chilcott.

WEST End performer Dean Elliott will be taking on the role of Paul Simon in The Simon & Garfunkel Story at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall later this month, and is hoping that he might stay on the stage this time. Last time he was on tour he accidentally fell off the front of the stage while playing the role of Buddy Holly in The Buddy Holly Story. Luckily, or perhaps shrewdly, he fell onto a paramedic who broke his fall, and no one was hurt. He got back on stage to rapturous applause, shaken, but not damaged - apart from his self-esteem.

THE ROYAL Mint has issued a new Churchill £5 coin for collectors of such items. As a reader phones to tell us: "The new coin shows him in his trademark greatcoat, but without some other familiar elements. Close, but no cigar."

FOOTBALL news, and Chelsea's Diego Costa is banned for three matches after stamping on Liverpool's Emre Can. As Mike Fagan tells us: "You must have had this comment by now, I heard it at Stamford Bridge on Saturday. 'Diego Costa - just two more stamps for a free coffee'."

WE end with a piece of daftness, as Scott Hoad tells us: "I've had the boss breathing down my neck all day.

"Mind you, it's my own fault for agreeing to give him a piggyback."