Golden years

GROWING old continued. One of the challenges for couples is when a husband retires and is around the house a lot. Says Kate Woods: "Had dinner with some women friends, and one was asked how her recently retired husband was doing. 'He's turned into a cantankerous old b******d' was the immediate reply. 'Oh dear,' said sympathetic friend, 'Is he short tempered with you?'

"'Of course not,' was the reply. 'He's not suicidal'."

Snow joke

STILL chilly out there, but at least there is good skiing on the Scottish slopes. It reminds us of a news agency years ago which hurriedly phoned The Herald to take back a story it had sent about a drunk dressed as a clown being sought by police on Ben Nevis. It explained that someone had misunderstood when they overheard a Fort William police officer telling a colleague: "There is some clown stuck up the Ben."

Bit of a blow

LOTS of folk under the weather just now. A Hillhead reader tells us: "I woke my husband up to tell him my box of tissues was empty. He thought he was funny replying, 'Well if it's empty, it isn't a box of tissues, simply a box.' I showed my appreciation by sneezing on his pyjamas before kicking him out to find another box."

It's a tie

BIT of a debate over the Radio Times naming Blue Peter as the best ever children's programme, with some folk commenting it was only liked by swots while most kids preferred Magpie. As Matt Heath summed it up: "You know who liked Blue Peter? People who are now the worst members of middle management who think it's fun to wear novelty ties."

I should cocoa

AS we say, we sometimes like a sweet story. A Matthew Mulligan in Ireland contacted Dublin Bus on its social media site to ask them: "My three-year-old wanted to know how you decide which buses get to sleep inside the depot garage and which have to sleep out in the yard."

The bus company took the trouble to reply: "Hi Matthew, we have rung around to a few of the depots and we can confirm that all buses are loved equally and take turns sleeping inside the warm depot. Those sleeping outside are given cocoa to keep warm."

It's true isn't it?

Urine charge

HONESTLY, enough with the Sydney Devine stories. But we end with Derek Miller in Torrance revealing: "As a young lad in a North Glasgow scheme, Sydney LPs were never far from the Dansette turntable. Indeed, as a 10-year-old, I was dragged by my mother to see the great man's shows at the Pavilion. Fast-forward 40 years and, having heard my childhood tales, my teenage son thought it would be a great idea to get me tickets for Syd's 40th anniversary show at the same venue as an "ironic" 50th birthday gift. He and I went along, more in hope than expectation.

"Just before he was due on stage, a 'refreshed' lady wearing a flashing headdress and pink feather boa, squeezed past us saying, 'Scuse me, ah'm away tae empty ma bladder furr Sydney'. Four decades may have passed, but it was nice to know that some aspects of Glaswegian life have never changed."

That's a date

RICHARD Ardern notices on the Scottish Parliament website that Tory MSP Jamie Green has put down the question: "To ask the Scottish Government how many delayed and cancelled trains there were between Edinburgh and Perth in 2017, broken down by date and time."

Richard wonders if "date and time" are two new kinds of breakdown affecting trains which need to be added to "leaves on the line" and "the wrong kind of snow".

Not so grim

TODAY'S piece of sheer daftness comes from comedy writer Sanjeev Kohl who declares: "Great news for Grimsby. It’s finally been renamed Glamorousby."