A THOUGHT occurred when watching Wallace and Gromit's latest adventure, The Curse Of The Wererabbit.

Had the makers ever seen the fearless bunny that lives next to platform 11 of York Station?

Diary is reliably informed that if you stand there for any length of time, a long-eared beastie will quietly hop along the track, totally oblivious to the screaming noisy mechanical monsters tearing up and down the East Coast Main Line. This scenario is regularly played out - unless, of course, the aforementioned monster should be heading for Platform 11 itself.

Then the rabbit will hop to one side, and nibble a bit of some bedraggled rail-side plant while the train passes, then hop back onto the lines without a care.

And what does it live on, apart from the wretched railway plant life? Leftovers from the station buffets? Discards from passengers' packed lunches? Diary will be keeping an eye out for the Railway Rabbit.

THERE'S a superior breed of shopper over there in Harrogate. Spotted in the changing rooms of a women's clothing emporium: a notice referring to the shop's "cubicals". One irritated shopper had taken the trouble to cross out the offending misspelling and replace it with the correct one. Hurrah for grammar and spelling standards, that's what we say. Here's to more of that kind of thing in York.

WITH all the talk of merging our emergency services - ideas include a "super police force" covering the whole of Yorkshire, and a fire control room in Wakefield - small wonder an acquaintance was left rubbing his eyes the other day.

He was sitting in a traffic queue on York's eastern outskirts when the familiar sound of sirens wafted through the air. Unable to move, he watched half-interestedly as the big red vehicle with the blue flashing lights made its way past the jam.

Then he saw written on the side of the vehicle the words "Grampian Fire and Rescue Service".

Grampian? Surely merging with a fire brigade north of the border would be taking economies of scale a little far?

Armed with this information, and reassured (perhaps a little irritably) that the incident had not been imagined, Diary was on to the case. And we can reveal that the Scots are not heading south to take over local firefighting duties.

A helpful representative of the North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service - thus far still based in the county, thank goodness - said that the service was testing a new type of fire appliance, and had borrowed one from colleagues in Grampian. So that was that - except that in the rush to sort out the mystery, Diary clean forgot to ask what emergency the fire engine was going to.

THIS just in from the courts.

Lawyers, they all live off the fat of the land, with Havana cigars in their top pockets and Porsches in the drive - don't they?

So how to explain a couple of lawyers spotted tucking into sandwich lunches in the gloom of the prosecution witness waiting room at York Magistrates' Court?

The lights were out and no Crown witnesses were present, so it seemed an odd place to find solicitors who specialise in defence cases.

Perhaps someone should have drawn their attention to the advocates' room round the corner.

There they could have enjoyed the edifying company of their peers. Perhaps the gloom suited their frugal natures - or maybe no one had shown them where the light switch was.

Updated: 09:07 Monday, October 31, 2005