Changed days

AS the Burns Suppers begin to wind down for another year, Brian Donohoe in Ayrshire tells us: “Was at a Burns Supper at the weekend sitting at a table with singer Sydney Devine. I asked him if he still gets knickers thrown at him when he performs. ‘I do, but they’re getting much bigger nowadays’, he replied.”

Protests in perspective WE showed one of the anti-Trump placards in Glasgow this week, and a reader in Edinburgh says: “I was at the Edinburgh protest where one gentle soul was brandishing the message, ‘Down with this sort of thing! Careful now’. Perhaps she was protesting about the protest.”

And a favourite of ours was from a smaller anti-Trump rally in St Andrews, where a placard read: “You know it’s bad when it’s protested in St Andrews.”

The biter bit

HARRY Potter author JK Rowling annoyed a few right-wingers in America by describing Donald Trump as a racist. One American contacted her on social media to say he would now burn his Harry Potter books and DVDs. Joanne merely replied: “Well, the fumes from the DVDs might be toxic and I’ve still got your money, so by all means borrow my lighter.”

When it all went a bit flat

READER Jean Miller was at her train station where a fellow traveller was complaining that she couldn’t use her car the day before. She explained that her teenage son was taking pre-17 driving lessons, which are all the rage, so she sent him out to defrost the car and warm it up before she took him to school.

He went out, put on the windscreen wipers and the heater but didn’t realise he should have started the engine as well, so mum came out to a flat battery, her son had to walk to school, and she had to walk to the shops to do her shopping.

Pavlovian response

OUR story about not being keen on housework reminds Cindy Paterson: “Our first dog, Katy, used to jump up at the window to see who was coming to visit whenever I got the Hoover out.”

Painful request

HOSPITAL DJs continued. John Marshall was in Edinburgh’s Royal Infirmary when a DJ volunteer came round and John requested The Proclaimers’ I’m On My Way From Misery To Happiness as being suitably uplifting. Says John: “Turned out they didn’t have that so instead they played The Proclaimers’ I Would Walk 500 Miles. At that point I couldn’t walk five paces and could not laugh because it ached so much.”

Keep it short

AFTER the news story about the Great Scottish Run half-marathon in Glasgow being run on a course that was too short, John Dunlop muses: “If it was okay for the Scottish Run to be shorter than advertised would anyone really mind if others things were cut a bit shorter? The Scottish World Cup Qualifiers for example to reduce our collective misery. Or the time after someone says, ‘The winner is’. Or Brexit.”

First Minister takes steps

FINAL suggestions for Nicola Sturgeon to dance to if she ever went on Strictly Come Dancing: l Should I Stay Or Should I Go Now – The Clash (John McNeill) l Bye Bye Baby, Baby Goodbye – Bay City Rollers (Maureen Hutchison) l Gettin’ In Over My Head – Brian Wilson (Carl Williamson).