Gave him the slip

BIT stressful for drivers just now in the bad weather. As Philip McCulloch in Glasgow tells us: "Travelling home down Elmbank Street I had to break slightly to avoid a car coming out of the carpark in Elmbank Crescent. As he turned in front of me a large bundle of files sitting on his boot lid slipped gently onto the road. When I drew abreast of him at the lights I tried to inform him that he lost his files.

"However feeling guilty about his late turn he would not look my way and drove off when the lights changed. Hope he managed without his important files."

Gritty subject

WE asked for names for the gritters that are out on the roads just now, and John Shedden in Perth suggests "Grit Expectations" but adds: "Perhaps it is more of a wish than a name." And Jim Davis combines our joint concerns of gritters names and growing old by commenting: "You know you are really old when the best name for a gritter lorry you can come up with is 'Tex Gritter' named of course after the famous singer of the fifties, Tex Ritter."

And perhaps with just an edge of tartness, Alison McDougall comments: "I noticed South Lanarkshire Council was not mentioned in the Herald article about winter road budgets. I expect that’s because they still have some grit left at the bottom of the one bag they bought this year."

Lavatorial humour

OLD insults that should be preserved, continued. Recalls Bob Hossack: "When I was an apprentice at an engine works in Greenock in the sixties one rather sharp faced, bearded, chap was said to resemble 'a rat looking through a lavvy brush'."

Put a sock in it

THE railways folk have announced that you will no longer be able to share a sleeper carriage between London and Glasgow with a stranger which was a way of saving yourself fifty quid or so. We always remember our late, great, colleague Willie Hunter's description of sharing a sleeper back to Glasgow after watching Scotland beat the world champions at Wembley in 1967. Wrote Willie: “After taking a refreshment, I fell on to the top bunk of a train sleeper from Euston. At wakey-wakey time the mouth felt like the inside of Jim Baxter’s stockings.

‘’Silently, over the rim of the bed appeared a bottle of Irn-Bru. With my provident companion from downstairs, who turned out to be a van driver and a Clyde supporter, there was a happy hour of living the triumph all over again, while we took our mornings of his Bru and what we could find in our half-bottles.’’

Sweet charity

GEORGE Thorley in Carluke was on a trip down south and tells us: "Hard evidence that living in London can be expensive - I saw a coat for sale in a charity shop in Marylebone High Street last week which was priced at £200.".

Missionary position

GORDON Wallace in Clarkston reads The Herald story about a preacher from Texas being appointed the new minister at Ibrox Parish Church and passes on: "While departing from Vancouver on an Alaskan cruise some years ago, I got into conversation with a lady from Nashville, Tennessee. She asked where I was from, and after I replied, 'Glasgow, Scotland', she exclaimed that her daughter was a missionary in Castlemilk. Not quite the response I expected."

Hot air

TODAY'S piece of daftness comes from Neil who says: "My telly’s just blown up!" Then adds: "I can’t afford a real one."

Computer beef

FED up having to dream up passwords for sites you want to visit on the internet? A reader in Paisley feels the need to email: "Tried to sign up to a website the other day. I put my password in as 'beef stew' but it said the password wasn’t stroganoff."

Sorry about that.