War zone

STRESSFUL time of year, the lead-up to Christmas. Taxi driver William says: "Just had a guy in the taxi, home on leave from the Army. His wife asked him to go to Glasgow with her for Christmas shopping on Saturday. He said, 'Stuff that, I'd rather go back to Iraq.' Was hard to disagree with him."

And a female reader tells us: "I used to fantasise about Harry Belafonte. Now I fantasise about sleep." Goodness, not heard that name for ages - am now scaring younger colleagues by breaking into shouts of "Daylight come and me wanna go home."

Dishing it out

RESTAURANTS of course getting a bit busy just now. We were chatting to a server in a city centre restaurant who tells us: "I head towards a table with plates of food and then at the last moment veer away to the table where the order came from. The look of disappointment on the other folk's faces somehow gets me through the day."

We think she was joking. Possibly.

Bit of a card

AND a harassed reader emails us: "What's the proper etiquette when someone cancels a night out you've been invited to at this time of year? Should I fight my urge to send a "Thank You' card?"

Celtic tie

ANOTHER name from the past was former Celtic owner Fergus McCann popping up in The Herald arguing that Hampden Park had outlived its usefulness. It reminds us of course of the great yarn when Billy Connolly was invited to Celtic Park for the first time, and as Fergus walked towards him, someone whispered to Billy that the etiquette was that he should be wearing a shirt and tie in the executive suite, not the T-shirt he had arrived in. Billy simply walked up to Fergus and shouted: "Fergus, lovely to meet you, but what kind of club are you running? I took my tie off two seconds ago and some bastard's gone off with it!"

Give him a pat

YOU'VE got to love Hue and Cry singer Pat Kane for his somewhat pretentious use of language. He took to social media this week to declare: "Wean 2 and I laughing and crying at Paddington last night. But weird ideologically. Immigration references obvious, but liberal middle-class is near sanctified here and Daddy Brown clearly involved in financial innovation that unravels the very social pluralism they proclaim."

Understandably someone had to comment: "Mate, it's a film about a talking bear."

It's a wrap

A GLASGOW reader heard a chap in his local at the weekend tell his pals: "The wife was wrapping Christmas presents at a fair lick, and I said to her, 'I bet you could wrap presents with your eyes closed'. She nodded and laughed so I said, 'Great, I'll go and get yours then'."

Class act

GRANDCHILDREN continued. Says a reader: "My grandson was elected Class Rep. in Primary One, and told us very proudly that he was 'The Class Reptile'. We never corrected him and he still doesn't know. Now in P2 he reports that someone else is the Class Reptile these days."

It's a cracker

THE television channel Dave asked for up-to-date political Christmas Cracker jokes, and the one we liked was: "Why are there only 11 Days of Christmas this year? Because the Three French Hens got stuck at the border." Any more suggestions?