ON my way to the recycling place in Kelso, with a sack of garden "stuff', and wearing very old clothes and a pair of 40-year-old wellies with a split in them, over the old laddered tights (trying to save the planet) and eschewing all signs of glamour on this occasion, I called to collect The Herald.

It was while holding the shop door open for a stream of folks, one of whom saw me and said "thanks", and others who did not even seem to see me, that I said out loud to myself: "Thank you," and came home. It happens a lot.

Then I read Kevin McKenna's article on the National Declaration for Independence ("This is the sort of Scotland I want to live in", The Herald, October 12) and thought yes, we could do with a lot more of those "trifling considerations like care, kindness, neighbourliness and generosity of spirit" which usually involves those things called "good manners"; ways in which many people used to behave some years ago, and some of us still do.

I am all for Nicola Sturgeon legislating for the re-introduction of those words "please and thank you"; I am not too fazed by the "dining-habits of the comfortable elite" as I go my own sweet vegetarian way and leave them to it, but I would like more "please" and "thank you", and some more smiles about the place.

Thelma Edwards, Kelso.

Discipline is a skoosh

THE outlawing of smacking has not come as a great surprise nor has it materially affected our punishment routine as grandparents.

For many years we have replaced smacking with a massively easier and hugely more effective penalty ... a water pistol.

When the need arises for chastisement it can be exacted with minimal effort – from the other side of the room!

To use a water pistol as a punishment weapon may seem bizarre but it’s amazing how discharging it with a smile can have one effect and yet discharging it with "the look" the complete opposite.

One is "play" the other mild humiliation.

Let’s hope my grandchildren are grown up before this too is proscribed.

Greg Davidson, Stair, Ayrshire.

Bilingual Subway

IT’S really heartening to see the Mòd back in Glasgow again (Baile Mòr nan Gaidheal – Glasgow the great city of the Gaels). I continue to be disappointed however, by the failure of our subway to feature bi-lingual signage in a way that would help normalise the language to the extent that it could be. There was a failure to do this when it was modernised – and now that the signage is being revamped and repaired the addition of bilingual signage could be done at minimal cost. Glasgow’s Gaelic language plan has a vision of hearing more Gaelic spoken in the streets: surely this would be a small but welcome step forward.

Dr Douglas Chalmers, Senior Lecturer, Glasgow Caledonian University.

Not so wild

IT is a pity the term "wild camping" has come to include two entirely different activities – backpacking or bike-packing; and parking your car and pitching a tent beside it. The access legislation should have distinguished between car-assisted and unassisted camping, and use the terms car camping and backpacking. It would be a great injustice if travellers and hillwalkers, on bike or on foot, were included in legislation that allows controls on car camping.

Eileen Holttum, Edinburgh EH9.

Auctioned off

THE BBC programme Make Me A Dealer" (October 11) was screened at Bigwood Auctioneers, Stratford. It was the auctioneers commission charge of 22.8 per cent which occasioned my interest and surprise.

A charge of 22.8 per cent levied on both buyer and seller reveals a tidy cake of 45.6 per cent on one item. It does seem it is not just the gavel, but the customers who are being hammered in this instance.

Allan C Steele, Giffnock.

Annoying absence

NOT that I am complaining but where have all the wasps and midges been this summer? Down at Westminster causing more agitation there?

Robin M Brown, Milngavie.