Cutting remark

AMUSED to read in a Travel Supermarket survey that Glasgow's robust Partick area is rated as one of Britain's hip places to hang out – overtaking nearby Finnieston. Bumped into actor Jimmy Martin recently who was recalling the barber's shop at Partick Cross decades ago. The owner once told him about a customer coming in with his young son who waited while "dad" got a haircut. Said Jimmy: "When he was finished he said to the barber, 'Would you cut the boy's hair while I nip into the bookies?' The barber cut away, but there was no sign of the father coming back and the barber said to the boy, 'He's taking his time'. The young lad replied he didn't know who he was and he had just asked him outside if he fancied a haircut."

Brushing it off

OUR school jotter stories remind a reader of when she was a school auxiliary and a teacher set her class to write sentences, usually with words taken from the Bible. One day the word was "repent" and the teacher showed our reader one lad's jotter in which he had written "My daddy had to repent the kitchen last night".

Feathers flying

OLD-STYLE insults remind Donald Macaskill in Dowanhill, Glasgow: "The building site timekeeper was trying to identify an operative and was helped by the tea-boy. 'Oh, aye, that's the fellow wi' a face like a hen's posterior wi' teeth in it.' Identification was instant – and posterior was not the word used."

Bit of a beef

AMERICA and Britain – two countries divided by a common language of course. Recalls Linda FitzGerald in Killin: "Some years ago we purchased a holiday home in Florida and were looking to make some local friends. Not knowing anyone, we invited the realtor and her husband to join us for Sunday lunch, saying we had a huge joint and there was plenty to go around. Such disappointed faces on the Sunday when we served them roast beef."

Money talks

CURRENT affairs are frequently discussed at golf clubs. A reader passes on the pronouncement of a fellow member at his club who declared: "If I had a bitcoin for every time someone tried to explain bitcoins to me, I'd have a lot of bitcoins, and no idea what to do with them."

Go on

ARTIST Chris Rutherford is finishing off a 28-metre mural of the TV comedy Father Ted on the stairs at the new Malone's pub in Edinburgh which is in the old Diane's Pool Hall. To keep out of the way of the tradesmen fitting out the new pub, Chris worked every evening after they had gone, or as he put it: "I told the trades when I arrived on site ‘never fear, the glamour is here’, it was of course somewhat tongue in cheek. I’m not exactly the most groomed of my friends."

It's not the first mural Chris has done in an Edinburgh pub, and he plans when he gets to 18 of them to print a leaflet and arrange his own golf pub crawl around the city - it's good to have an ambition, we reckon.

Kicked off

THE last day in January yesterday – at last – and the end of the January transfer window for football clubs. As Laura Perrins remarked: "Did the Conservatives really transfer Theresa May to China on Deadline Day? That's harsh."

Curses

A GLASGOW reader swears he heard a chap in his local pub tell his pals: "I’m in really big trouble at work if they ever find out that I actually don’t have Tourette’s syndrome."