Driving home a point

BIG golf news yesterday was the very posh Muirfield Golf Club taking a second vote, and this time agreeing to allow women members. As reader Kenny Gillies tells us: “I can’t help noticing that there has been no criticism of The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers for holding another referendum on allowing women to become members at Muirfield just 10 months after the last vote.”

Beyond the pale

THERE has been a big growth in craft beers being sold in pubs, particularly India Pale Ale. An Edinburgh reader emails us: “My grandfather tells me there was an old gag. Chap walks into a bar and says, ‘Give me a beer’. ‘Pale?’ asks the barman. ‘No, a glass will do fine,’ replies the drinker.”

Ayr today

WE read that the Ayr Gaiety Theatre could face closure as the local council has cut its grant - despite pitching in quite a few quid recently to refurbish it - but that’s councils for you.

We remember our erstwhile colleague Jack McLean once arguing that “Ayr Gaiety” was a contradiction as “gaiety in Ayr is a landlady giving you breakfast after half-past seven in the morning.”

Put the wind up

BIT windy in Scotland yesterday. A Paisley reader tells us he was once flying on a small Texan airline from Dallas to Charlotte in North Carolina when the stewardess announced: “The sun is shining here in Dallas but it’s wet and windy in Charlotte. Why in the world y’all wanna go there I really don’t know.”

Slice of life

SAD news that the pop charts are not what they were. Now with downloads, instead of just singles, they include all songs from albums individually, so that Ed Sheerin has 15 of the Top Twenty tracks just now. Boring.

Anyway, we recall when Princess Beatrice cut Ed’s face at a party while swinging a sword in a mock knighting ceremony. As stand-up Janey Godley commented: “If a Glasgow woman had a sword, the cops would have been called.”

Losing his titles

AH the reach of social media. Orkney Library posted on Twitter that it was having a sale of old books at 10p a pop and included a picture of three books by comedy writer Gyles Brandreth. Within an hour, Gyles had replied: “Good grief. Has it come to this?”

It’s a fact of life

ROBERT Thompson in Bearsden tells us: “A friend and his wife and six-year-old son sat down for breakfast and the son asked, ‘Where did I come from?’ The wife beats a hasty retreat leaving dad to explain. Before replying Dad asked why he wanted to know.

“Son says because the boy who sits beside him in school said he came from East Kilbride. Dad says it was a narrow escape.”

The conversation was buzzing

TODAY’S piece of daftness comes from Moose Allain who passes on the telephone conversation - “Who’s calling please?” “Mr Whitcombe… with a b” “And the bee’s name?”