Local colour

"I SEE the Orange Hall in Airdrie has solar panels on the roof," says reader Andy Bollen.

"It's good to see them go green."

Check it out

IT seems a few folk are agitated about the trendy American foodstore Whole Foods in Giffnock announcing its closure – more than 1,500 people have signed an online petition opposing the shutdown. Pity they didn't use it a bit more often. Anyway it reminds us of the story, which we listed under apocryphal, summing up the store's perceived pretentiousness. It was the customer at the Whole Foods checkout who declared: "I need to read the numbers on the barcode out to you – I don't want any lasers touching my food."

Bully for you

WE read that it is Anti-Bullying Week. A reader in Patrick tells us: "The guy who bullied me in secondary school is still taking my lunch money.

"But to be fair to him, he does give me a pretty big pizza slice in Greggs."

Bit of a passenger

BUS stories continued. Says Mary Duncan: "One morning on my way to work there was a passenger singing like a linty, happily drunk. He got off the bus just before me, and when I moved to the front I said to the driver, 'How can someone be that drunk at eight in the morning?' The driver's reply, 'Just lucky, I guess'."

A balloon

AS if Theresa May hasn't got her troubles to seek, there is continued press speculation that Brexit Minister David Davis could replace her as prime minister. Reader Foster Evans is flicking through an old published diary of the late political sketch writer Simon Hoggart who listened to a speech by David Davis on Europe, and then wrote: "David Davis is to speechmaking what Edward Scissorhands was to balloon animals."

Eat your words

WE like to record anniversaries in The Diary, and sports writer Matt Vallance tells us it was 20 years ago that a team from Minsk in Belarus came to Paisley for a hockey tournament. Says Matt: "They travelled by bus, and were supposed to be billeted in a Boys Scouts outdoor centre on Gleniffer Braes. We splashed it in the Paisley Daily Express and, as the story included the fact they would be eating 'plain Scottish cooking – mince and potatoes', the brilliant headline on the story was 'Minsk and Tatties'.

"Sadly, after the paper had gone to press, they got a deal in a Paisley hotel, so the headline really was mince."

Skirting the issue

A REGULAR reader tells us the friends were discussing the effects of the menopause, with one woman explaining that she had bought special pants that have magnets inside them which somehow reduce your hot flushes. She added that she inadvertently bumped into a bowl of paper clips in her office when she was letting a fellow worker get past her, and the paper clips jumped out the bowl and attached themselves to the front of her skirt, much to everyone's surprise.

Sprouting prejudice

WE do enjoy all the faux outrage of folk claiming that religion is being taken out of Christmas by companies. A Finnieston reader emails us: "Tesco isn't even calling its sprouts Christmas sprouts this year, instead calling them Brussels sprouts. This is the typical political correct anti-Christian pro-EU nonsense we've come to expect in this country, and it's not on."