Big shout

AS the schools break up for the summer we look back on how The Diary has recorded school holidays in the past, including Tory MSP Murdo Fraser who once observed on social media: "Don't we love the school holidays? As one parent said, if you're not shouting at your children, you're not spending enough time with them.”

Crushed

A STIRLING reader travelling by train to Edinburgh one summer had to endure standing room only in the crowded carriage while the conductor apologised, stating: "This is due to the school holidays and the Edinburgh Festival." "Which of these," wondered our passenger to himself, "took ScotRail by surprise?”

Cornered

TEACHERS, of course, look forward to the break, including one Glasgow teacher who told us she needed a holiday after marking her last crop of homework before the schools broke up and wrote in the top right corner of one essay jotter 'Date?' as she was fed up with pupils who forgot to write when the homework was done. The pupil wrote below it: "No, thanks. I'm too young to be in a relationship.”

Rise and shine

HOW parents cope with their children being under their feet in the summer – a reader once sent us a photograph of a note left for her offspring by a mother before she went to work . It read: "Today's wifi password can be unlocked by texting a photo of a clean kitchen to me.”

Capital

TELLING your teacher what you did on your holidays is standard on your return. A teacher in Dumbarton told us about one young lad in the French class trying to explain in French that he spent part of the summer at his granny's in Brucehill – one of the more down-to-earth areas of Dumbarton. At this, the French assistant got very excited, telling them in French: "How wonderful. I have been to Brucehill and it is marvellous. So pretty! So cosmopolitan! The food! The people!" This confused the class somewhat until the penny dropped that Brucehill, with a Dumbarton attempt at a French accent, did, indeed, sound like the capital of Belgium.

A Bute-y

AND a retired teacher told us: "One boy wrote that he had been to Rossie, and was severely reprimanded for not being able to spell Rothesay properly. Eventually he managed to persuade the teacher that he had in fact spent his summer at Rossie which was what we called in those days an approved school, near Montrose.”

Innocence robbed

PUPILS can reveal quite a bit about their home life, and one wee boy excitedly told the class that when they were away for their summer holidays their house had been broken into. "That's terrible," soothed the teacher. "Did they know who did it?" "My dad said it was bastards," replied the little one.

Drink to that

A READER in Castle Douglas recalled holidaying on Arran with his parents when he was young, and when out one day they came across a pub which his delighted dad described as an oasis. It explained why, when he was back in school, he put his hand up when the teacher asked what an oasis was, and emphatically replied: "A pub in the middle of nowhere.”

Movie move

A SOUTH side reader once told us he was at the cinema in Silverburn when a woman arrived with a gaggle of noisy children. She got the four of them seated in a row in front of our poor reader, and then she quietly walked away and sat in a different row.