Button it

TALES from bus stops have always fascinated us. Says reader Angela Morgan: "I was at a bus stop in Edinburgh where a refined lady in the queue in conversation with a friend said, 'Oh yes, she’s still very sharp.” Second refined lady replied, 'Yes – she’s as sharp as a button'. Cue much sage nodding from both."

Alarming times

THE death of Liam Kane, The Herald's former managing director who led the company's buy-out from Lonrho 26 years ago, reminds us that Liam disliked staying in his management office and was often seen strolling through all departments. He was once in the caseroom, in the Mitchell Street office, where the pages of the paper were made up when the fire alarm rang. He thought he would show leadership by going out the nearest fire exit which took him down a flight of iron stairs outside the building into a small courtyard from which there was only one door.

He had no idea where he was, but charged through the unmarked door – which turnout to be the fire exit of Sammy Dow's pub in Mitchell Street. His sudden entrance startled many of The Herald's printers drinking there who used the fire exit as a regular thoroughfare throughout their shift.

Milking it

A SIGN of the times as Maggie Cuddihy in Leith overhears a mother in the local supermarket tell her four-year-old: "“Yes, I will make you chocolate milk when we get home. Do you want goat or almond?”

Picture this

SAD news that the Fopp record store on Glasgow's Byres Road is to close. We remember when former Fopp boss Peter Ellen was at a reception at Holyrood Palace where he was introduced to Prince Philip, who asked what he did. "I run music stores," said Peter, before a puzzled Philip barked: "Sheet music, is it?" Peter successfully fought the urge to reply: "No, for the most part it's pretty good."

The other Fopp store in Glasgow, in Union Street, once had a vending machine outside the front door to sell CDs round the clock. It didn't work out. The machine's mechanism was frequently clogged with photocopies of fivers, drawings of fivers, vouchers from other stores, and once a postcard from Ibiza.

Transported

A READER'S suggestion of coffee shops at cemeteries which could be named Creme de la Crem reminds Gordon Casely: "In the days when Glasgow Museum of Transport resided in Albert Drive, early-comers to funerals next door at St Ninian’s Episcopal Church used to wander into the museum, either gawping at the trams, or adjourning to the coffee shop. Museum curator, the late Dr Tony Browning, wasn’t put off in the slightest. As he said, 'It all goes to improve visitor figures'."

Heat is on

YES, we should take climate change seriously, but a reader looking at the artist's impression in The Herald yesterday of what a renovated Broomielaw in Glasgow could look like noticed that the picture included a bikini-clad woman paddle-boarding on the Clyde in the city centre. "Well, if that's what global warming is going to bring, I'm all for it," he says.

That's a date

GROWING old, continued. Forgetting things comes with the ageing process, but reader Robert Sutherland liked the modern take on it when he asked an ageing American friend for a date in US history, and he paused for a moment before replying: "I know this, but it’s up in the iCloud and I’ve forgotten my password”.

Hunted

AMERICAN stand-up Reginald D Hunter, one of the more thoughtful performers around, is appearing at Glasgow's King's Theatre next month. He was once interviewed by a Herald features writer before appearing at the Edinburgh Festival. She asked him about the most stupid thing he had ever done. His reply? "This interview." She included it in his reply in the feature.