ROY Powell joined the Army in June 1939. They kitted him out with a uniform, button stick and a pair of boot brushes.

The retired headteacher hasn't seen his uniform since the end of the war, but his boot brushes are still going strong.

As a soldier he saw action at Dunkirk and landed in Normandy on D-Day. In each case, his boot brushes caught up with him shortly afterwards.

After the war, the brushes kept a shine on Roy's shoes all through a teaching career which led to his becoming head of Shipton Street School in York.

They also brought his four kids' school shoes up to spiff.

Now living in a smallholding at Cawood, Roy is more likely to wear wellies to attend to his couple of horses, donkey and poultry. But his brushes still get called into action.

"My wife wears boots," he said. "And I clean them. They're still great boot brushes with plenty of bristles.

"I don't think you would buy better brushes today."

Indeed not. If anyone else has an item they are still using which has offered years of valued service, give us a call.

STILL on boots, this arrived in the post on Monday. That's right, it's a child's right wellington stuffed with straw.

Since it has been standing on the Diary's desk, various guesses have been made as to its purpose. One wag suggested that Worzel Gummidge wasn't looking at his best.

Another, with a blacker sense of humour, asked whether it had been sent by a landmine charity.

In fact, it is an attempt to publicise a farm-based children's TV show. If the company would like to send the matching left boot (they would fit the chief photographer's grandchild nicely) the Diary will explain more.

WHO says students never give anything back? This week four women from York University Students' Union sent Eamonn Holmes and Fiona Phillips of the GMTV breakfast show... a Toilet Santa.

This unique product has Father Christmas flashing his bum cleavage as he sings and jigs about on the throne.

Disappointingly, Eamonn and Fiona did not take this as a comment on their show, and rather enjoyed the joke. Ms Phillips seemed less disgusted at the toilet humour than at the fact that Santa was wearing sandals and white socks. Evidence that Christmas gets more special every year.

POLICE top brass Della Cannings treated a York audience to a virtuoso display of her sharpened wit during a whip-round for next year's continuing fight against crime.

As a bobby's helmet was passed around to help bolster the force budget, the North Yorkshire Chief Constable turned her attention to Evening Press photographer Paul Baker who was busily snapping away yards from her face.

"Would somebody stop that man at the back who keeps flashing at me?" she asked, as the strobe effect of his flash light slowed her movements almost to a standstill.

Mercifully Paul took his leave and edged out of the nearest door before any of North Yorkshire's finest had to be brought in.

ASTONISHINGLY, not a single reader has contacted the diary to demand more pictures of Hugh Bayley with chin hair.

We fear the pictures of a post-pit Saddam Hussein have killed the beard's tentative resurgence as a fashion statement.

OVERHEARD in Crabtree & Evelyn, Stonegate, York:

Customer (peering at handwritten sign): What does that word say?

Assistant: "Organza"

Customer: Oh, I thought it said, er, something quite different. I haven't got my glasses on.

Assistant: If we were selling that, we'd have a rush on. But if that's what you're after, I know a business that can help..."

Frustratingly, the conversation ended there.

Write to: The Diary, Chris Titley, The Evening Press, 76-86 Walmgate, York YO1 9YN

Email diary@ycp.co.uk

Telephone (01904) 653051 ext 337

Updated: 09:49 Thursday, December 18, 2003