Oh baby

OUR tales of the Glasgow Subway remind reader Mary Duncan of the slightly nerve wracking event: "I was waiting on the platform when the Tannoy instructed a young woman with a baby in a pushchair to fold the pram before getting on the train. As she did so I helpfully held the baby, stepped onto the train, the door closed and the train shot off, leaving the distraught mother! Happy ending, though... we met up at the next station and Mum and baby were reunited."

Stoating

WE return to the topic of trying to talk proper as a retired teacher in Bishopbriggs recalls in his teaching days that they were pushing their charges to use proper English when talking to a teacher. He tells us: "A teacher coming out of the staffroom which lacked a window asked a boy outside what the weather was like. He thought for a moment, and replied, 'Whole stones!'"

Dressing down

SIR David McNee, who has sadly died, was involved in high profile events as Metropolitan Police Commissioner, but there were humbler cases when he was a beat bobby in Glasgow's Partick - such as the time he booked 16 youths for playing football at four in the morning. He felt the noise was unfair on folk trying to sleep, but knowing they might simply run away he gathered up their jackets which they had put down for goals. As they queued up for their jackets he booked them, apart from one jacket-less lad who ran away.

Constable McNee followed him home where he was hiding in the staircase cludgie. As David dragged him off, the lad's mother attacked David in the street with such ferocity her nightgown fell off, with the lad shouting: "Look what you've done to my mam!" Funny the things you remember years later.

In the soup

BEFORE he joined the police, Sir David was called up during the war to the Navy as a teenager and was sent for training to Skegness. He later recalled: "It wasn't profitable to complain about the food. I did so once when I found a cockroach in my soup only to be told sharply by the Petty Officer of the day, 'McNee, hush your mouth. You have more meat in your soup than anyone else.' I finished the soup and never complained again'."

Crying shame

A PIECE of whimsy from a west end reader who tells us: "I remember when I was a child my dad said, 'I'll give you something to cry about.' He didn't hit me. What he meant was destroying the housing market, melting the ice caps, cutting down the rainforests and polluting the oceans with plastic."

Fare enough

OUR sister paper the Evening Times says that the Clachan Inn at Drymen is the oldest pub in Scotland, dating back to 1734 - unless any readers know otherwise. Lovely place Drymen. A reader once told us that he got on the bus from Glasgow to Drymen where the only other passengers were a jolly group of OAP walkers using their bus passes to head off to the country. Said our reader: "After I'd paid and taken my seat, one of them pointed to me and said, 'There's only one paying customer on the bus. Let's show our gratitude and give him a big haun!' And they all started clapping."

Chew on this

MARRIED life, continued. Comments Robert Knop: "Went to the pictures. 'I don't want popcorn,' says my wife who's about to eat half my popcorn during the film."

Wonder

TODAY'S piece of daftness comes from Dave Magee who says: "I wonder if the guy who came up with the term 'One Hit Wonder' came up with any other phrases?"