AS a treat for the kids, Mel Merry took them for a slap-up feed at Pizza Hut in York.

These restaurant chains have their detractors but they know how to keep kids entertained. Soon the children were poring over the Dr Seuss Rhyme Time wordsearch that was provided. They were looking for words which rhymed with hook, bun, lump and more.

Then young George Merry, ten, spotted a word which had nothing to do with the clues. It read "EMAGUB". But as any scholar of the wordsearch knows, you can go backwards as well as forwards.

Reverse it and you get BUGAME. Or BUGA ME as a giggling George pronounced it.

Dad Jack, who with Mel runs the Ackhorne and Tap & Spile pubs in York, was taken aback.

"I reckon it might have been done by a disgruntled bloke at the printers," said the Diary's fitness correspondent, famed as the pickled egg magnate of the North Riding.

So now you know. If you ever hit your thumb with a hammer or your horse comes home at 100-1, just shout out: "Emagub!"

THE Diary's dismay at the early arrival of Christmas has deepened.

Last week we were sent a Yuletide stocking complete with a few little bits of stuff that you might foist on your children in desperation.

It including a set of cards called "Gross Bottom Trumps". This delightful diversion "describes a host of surreal, anal outbursts in a competitive card game format". Not quite Bridge, is it?

But we aren't the only ones suffering. Regular correspondent Ron Willis was crossing Lendal Bridge the other day and "I twigged something that tempted screaming habdabs. Outside Yates's Wine Lodge is a ludicrously premature exhortation, set out more to induce waterborne travellers than pedestrians.

"This urges something like: 'Book early for your Christmas party'.

"Give us a break. I've only just recovered from last December's annual gigantic anti-climax."

Any more observations gratefully received.

A READER emails to say she saw a coach full of elderly blind and partially sighted visitors as they were dropped off in Kent Street car park.

They struggled to Clifford's Tower then a coach took them to Union Street car park from where they made their way to the Minster.

She said it was so sad to see them struggling with their white sticks. Her question: how come coaches are not allowed any closer, even if carrying disabled people, when tour buses have the run of the city?

HERE'S a sign of the times. The Diary has been sent a pack of Jammie Dodgers. The famed biscuits have been reconstituted for our health-conscious times with no artificial additives to the jam and half the previous salt levels. What would Billy Bunter have said?

THE word "lecture" makes many folk run a mile. But with the right attitude, lectures do not have to be dusty, dull affairs.

So mortar boards off to the lively folk at the Yorkshire Philosophical Society. Its latest lecture has the eye catching title: God And The Doctor We Alike Adore - Even Dr Harold Shipman.

Updated: 08:53 Tuesday, October 05, 2004