I ENJOYED Garry Scott’s article (“I miss the pub – and not just for the drink”, The Herald, April 20). As the owner of a pub on Glasgow’s “gritty Gallowgate” – an area mentioned in the piece – I agree with him that a visit to the pub, especially if it involves catching up with old friends, or making news ones, can be an enjoyable social experience. The hospitality industry in general helps make our cities, towns and villages places worth visiting, providing focal points for local communities and extending a welcome to visitors. It makes a significant contribution to both the local and national economy.

I believe the hospitality industry will have an important part to play in regenerating the economy when restrictions are finally lifted, so it is important that support for businesses is fairly distributed. At present a venue with a rateable value of more than £51,000 is not able to access the business interruption grant from local authorities. This arbitrary figure makes no sense and means that viable and long-established businesses are starved of cash flow and their survival is threatened. We need to resolve this matter to help Scotland to rise from the ashes of the Covid-19 crisis.

Billy Gold, Hielan Jessie bar, Glasgow G4.

Piping up, and down

THE photographs from the Glasgow Alhambra’s A Wish for Jamie (Those Were The Days”, The Herald, April 20) must have come from one of the earlier seasons of that pantomime as the pipe band are wearing stage outfits. In later seasons, the band were Territorial Army pipers and drummers earning some extra cash over the winter by playing the performance into the interval, and then again at its close. Instead of a neat stage outfit, we wore the uniforms of our own bands: 1st HLI, 5th/6th HLI and Glasgow University OTC. The friendliness of the stars towards us part-timers is something I remember warmly.

It was one of the more precarious gigs. We had to march from a high point above the stage down a zig-zag ramp, rather than stand on the stairs shown in your photograph. The pipe major was excused this adventure, and allowed to enter at stage level, after he’d tripped at the top of the ramp and arrived at the foot playing one of the quicker renditions of The Black Bear. No names no pack drill: he was a veteran of St Valery and a gold medallist at Oban and Inverness.

Gilbert MacKay, Newton Mearns.

RUSSELL Leadbetter’s articles on Glasgow’s Five Past Eight shows (Those Were The Days, The Herald, April 18 & 20) bring to mind one opening chorus of 20 or more beautiful long-legged dancers all kicking their height in perfect unison, Soon, to use a hackneyed phrase, a titter ran through the audience and this became full-blooded laughter as the rest of us realised the reason. Stanley Baxter was in the line-up almost indistinguishable from his fellow dancers as his long-legs and high-kicking perfectly matched theirs. What a trouper.

I believe Stanley is still with us and enjoying happy retirement in London.

W Raymond Shaw, Glasgow G41

Magpies galore

IN the process of self-isolation, I went on a walk locally and came upon a tree festooned with magpies. Eventually it was possible to count that there were 16 of them. The old rhyme came into my head – the one about sorrow and mirth, a funeral and a birth, but 16?

Is this an omen? Maybe another pandemic or an apocalypse? Or is the magpie population just out of control?

We shall see.

Mrs M Copland, Glasgow G14.

Give us piece

WHEN my daughter delivered bread to my flat, she remarked it was like a role reversal of The Jeely Piece Song, with the weans throwing bread to the parents on the balcony.

It made me smile on a dull day captive in the flat.

R Hamilton, Bearsden.