It’s a dog’s life
THE news pages report that the men involved in the annual hunt for 
gugas – young gannets – have received threats that police are investigating. Eating the gugas is not to everyone’s taste. As a reader once told us: “A wizened islander said that once on Mingulay,while looking after sheep, he and his mates tried a guga, or ‘Barra duck’ as it’s known. ‘The guga wasn’t very nice, so we gave 
it to the dog,’’ said the old man in his soft lilting brogue, ‘but he had to lick his backside to get the taste of it out 
his mouth’.’’

Pot boiler
AND there is of course the classic recipe for cooking guga. It is: “Boil the guga for an hour in a pot with an old hobnailed boot. Remove from pot. Throw away the guga and consume the boot.”

Tales of the riverbank
OUR tale of piracy on the old Renfrew Ferry reminds Nigel Dewar Gibb: “The late, great cartoonist Bud Neil had a cartoon showing what was clearly the Renfrew Ferry with the ‘Captain’ resplendent in gold braided uniform bending down, pointing up river and saying to an amazed, open mouthed wee boy, ‘Yonder, to the North it lies, dark, brooding and mysterious – Yoker’.”

Chic nose it
AND The Herald archive picture of Chic Murray inevitably brings forth lines from the great man, with David Miller in Milngavie reminding us: “There was Chic’s story about the woman with the long nose. In telling it, he said: ‘I’ve nothing against long noses – they run in the family’.”

Point taken
FOOTBALL fans were getting excited yesterday about the transfer day deadline. It was harsh though of Dorset Police stating on social media: “Using your mobile for Deadline Day updates? You’ll have twice as many points as Arsenal if we catch you doing it at the wheel.”

Going Dutch
AND it might have been confirmed last night that Dutch player Virgil 
van Djik is moving to Liverpool in one of the big transfers of the day. Daniel Walton in Manchester 
tells us that a Liverpool fan he knows told his girlfriend that “Virgil van Dijk” is the Dutch for “I love you.” Not being a football fan, she took him at his word and ends every 
text to him with “Virgil van 
Dijk x” which seems to cheer 
him up.

Room service
TRAINSPOTTING author Irvine Welsh, now living in America, 
is not that enchanted with Donald Trump it seems. After Trump’s visit to the flooded Houston area, Irvine commented: “Terrific gesture to offer housing homeless Texan families in Trump chain of hotels. What, you didn’t make it? My mistake.”

He turned pink
TODAY is the start of Lamb Week 
as producers try to get us to eat more lamb, particularly in Scotland where folk eat 25 per cent less than the British average. We recall a  charity dinner at the Hilton raising money for the Maggie Centre when the harassed staff were trying to serve more than 500 hungry diners at once. At one table, a chap looked suspiciously at his lamb and told 
the waitress that he had ordered it to be pink. She told him: ‘’See if you squeeze your beetroot over it, 
it’ll turn pink,’’ and returned to her busy job.

Made her bed
WE stumbled into sleeper stories, and a reader was once booking a sleeper at Glasgow’s Central Station where she was told she would have to share the bunk-bedded berth with another traveller. “Male or female?” she asked.
“Oh, female,” the clerk replied, before adding: “But I can see you’re disappointed.”