A DELEGATE to the LibDem conference at the SECC in Glasgow was heard asking for directions to "Saucy Hall Street".

We hope he wasn't disappointed with the street's attractions when he got there.

Starting young

AS ithers see us. National Geographic in America sent Andrew Evans to visit Barra and he wrote that he asked a shop assistant at Glasgow Airport if she had ever been there. Continued Andrew: "Aye!' she surprised me, 'I had my first drink in Barra!'

"'So it was fun then?'" I asked, imagining her among a crowd of young people in a dark pub. 'I was 11 years old,' she surprised me again. 'I was in the pub wi' my family and the folks there jes' handed me a pint.'"

Somehow you never see that on the Visit Scotland advertisements.

Motoring in the Borders

GRAND Theft Auto V, the latest computer game sensation, was developed in Scotland, which is why references to Scotland are always sneaked in. This time Hawick is a drug-infested area in the game.

We also like the fact that the fake stock exchange, based on the American Nasdaq, is given the more Scottish version, Bawsaq.

Health screening

RONNIE Buchanan in Larkhall tells us his wife visited the doctor's surgery where an elderly gentleman was having trouble with the touch-screen technology, and announced that he couldn't remember his date of birth, so would probably have to get his memory tested while he was there.

He then sat down to watch the information screen and declared: "I canny read that, I'll need my eyesight tested noo."

His turn came and the digital voice announced his name and room number. "Whit room was that?" he asked the other patients. "I'll need my hearing done as well - and I only came in for ma corns."

Anatomy of a road sign

WE used a picture of the French town Sore, and suggested it would be twinned with Tongue in Scotland. Ken Nicholson in Newlands says: "Surely the perfect twin would be Back, in Lewis?"

Scents of timing

ONE of the dilemmas of growing older is wondering if you should still go to pop concerts. As Susan Orlean bemoaned: "I'm so old I still expect my hair to smell of cigarette smoke after I go to a concert."

A step too far

TENEMENT tales continued. A reader reminds us of the old woman in Colin MacFarlane's biography, No Mean Glasgow, who had just been moved to a 20-floor multi-storey flat after living in a tenement all her life. She went missing, and was found three days later on the ground floor clutching a scrubbing brush.

When police asked where she'd been, she replied: "Somebody told me it wis ma turn tae dae the stairs."

A wigging for judge

THE news story abut the Muslim woman having to remove her face veil in court provokes a reader to tell us: "It's a bit rich of a judge telling her that a courtroom was not an appropriate place for people to wear inappropriate headgear."