Best served cold

AS performers arrive in Edinburgh for the Fringe, comedian Lucy Porter has a look around town and remarks: "I see that the Edinburgh restaurant I've had a grudge against for 15 years (because they were rude to my parents) has now closed. Cross me at your peril!"

Flaky

ANOTHER Edinburgh tradition is performers reminiscing about how tough they had it. First up this year is writer Emma Kennedy, who recalled on social media: "My first Edinburgh I slept under a coffin. There was one toilet and one hand basin for 60 of us. I had two baths in six weeks. We had nothing to eat except cornflakes and pasta. We all got athlete's foot. I performed to an average of 10 people and fell in love. It was brilliant."

Inevitably another performer replied: "At least you had cornflakes..."

On her toes

OUR stories about unusual names remind Jan Brown in Ardfern: "Back in the 1980s when we lived in Eaglesham, I took a telephone call for my husband, who was at work, from someone with the unusual name of Netherly Parkertoes. My husband rang the number and, sure enough, Netherly Parkertoes answered the call. It took my husband a few minutes before he realised that he was speaking to Netherlee Park Autos about a problem that we were having with our car."

Got your number

GROWING old, continued. Says a Gourock reader: "Looked at the clock and thought I'd woken up at 6:99 this morning. Then I found my glasses."

Full tilt

READERS are still remembering the old sailing ship The Carrick when it was tied up in Glasgow as a private club. Says a Falkirk reader: "The problem was that if your soup flowed gently to the far side of the bowl when the tide was in, your gravy or sauce on the next course crept slowly towards your lap when the tide turned to go out."

Stiff rebuke

A READER in London tells us: "There were one other Scot working in my office who became a good pal, but unfortunately he moved back to Glasgow. Occasionally folk would ask me in the pub, 'Where's your pal Crawford?' I would shake my head and tell them, 'He's gone to a better place.' They express their condolences until I explain that Glasgow really is a better bet than London these days."

In a spin

A GLASGOW reader gets in touch to tell us: “When I saw the headline on the BBC sports pages ‘Colombian cyclist wins Tour de France’ I thought to myself that after so many years of scandal in the sport, it was a relief to see a winner nobody would suspect of drug offences.”

Through the hoops

WE like BBC sports journalist Stefan Bienkowski's colourful description of a story that seems to appear daily in The Herald: "It's the year 2085. The ice caps have melted. The oceans have flooded the planet. Famine and disease stalk the nations of the Earth. And Arsenal are still nitpicking over how to pay Celtic £25m for Kieran Tierney."

A bit alien

A HYNDLAND reader emails: "The way 2019 is going, I'm putting money on an alien invasion. Aliens: 'It's not an invasion, it's an intervention'."

Read more: 1941: Exiled Norwegian king attends ship launch on the Clyde