SO you haven't managed to get away to la belle Paris this Easter, but ne frettez-vous pas. There is a French brasserie at the bottom of Byres Road in Glasgow which looks as if it would not be out of place on a grand boulevard in the City of Light.

The terrace of the Café Français, with its marble effect tables and waiters in white aprons, is just crying out for le tout Partick to sit oot with a packet of Gauloises and a copy of Le Monde and partake of a café solo and a cognac. My newsagent Rajou doesn't do Le Monde, so I had to settle for a 15p copy of The Sun.

Another element of authenticity in my trottoir experience was lost when the waiter asked if I wanted my coffee "light or dark". The closest I have come to such a question before was in the Sarry Heid in the Gallowgate when I was asked if I wanted my schooner of wine "dark or clear". The clear was a brown colour.

The value of the prix fixe menu was quite Parisian. For only £10 I could have had three courses of soup du jour, boeuf bourguignon and profiteroles. The croque monsieur avec frites (that's a toastie with chips) was £7. There are swings and roundabouts in this Glasgow brasserie.

A situation beyond the control of this estimable estaminet is the not very Rive Gauche but very Glasgow gauche ruling by the city's licensing authorities that le terrace is fermé at 10pm. So swally your cognac, pick up your Gitanes, and get tae France.

SORRY to turn this column into a gastronomic tour of my own arrondissement, but across the street and up a bit from the Café Français is Mrs Majhu's, a new restaurant in what we call the Indian style.

Now, I find that children of a tender age are not good at eating curries. You take them to the finest eating establishments and lay before them succulent delicacies. They will shun the kahari and the korma, the dansak and the daal. They will, however, consume any amount of poppadoms. When their mum asks later what they had for lunch, they reply: "Big crisps." This does nothing for the reputation as purveyor of a balanced diet to little ones left in your care.

The gol gupa may be the device to tempt reluctant young diners to sample subcontinental cuisine beyond the big crisp. The gol gupa is made from much the same flour as a poppadom but is shaped like a small, hollow UFO. The modus operandi is that you make a hole in the UFO and stuff it with tasty fillings. It's a vol-au-vent as the Asian ladies in Pollokshields know it.

I was introduced to the gol gupa in Mrs Majhu's. Karen, as Mrs Majhu is known to her friends, serves the gol gupas with a chickpea and potato salad topped with a choice of creamy yoghurt or broon sauce. It's not just any broon sauce, but a concoction of tamarind and green chillies and other ingredients you won't find in Daddies or HP.

It is just one of Mrs Majhu's culinary delights. Her small but perfectly formed menu includes salmon with a coconut and parsley crust and crispy lamb ladyfingers. Not to mention light-as-a-feather minted onion bhajis. I suspect my young ones will stick to the gol gupas, hopefully with a dash of broon sauce.

IRVINE Welsh is regularly accused of peddling a perverse picture of society. His latest offering, Wedding Belles on Channel Four, certainly ticked enough of the boxes (from incest to necrophilia via a spot of cowboy fetish sex) which sent Mortified From Morningside clutching for the heart pills, if not the off-switch.

Life has been busy imitating Mr Welsh's art this week. One of his Leith belles snorts the ashes of her drug-dealer's dead dog. She mistakes the receptacle for the canine's earthly remains, a tasteful silver box with the name Charlie inscribed thereon, for a cool stash-box. Then, in what passes for real life, Rolling Stone Keith Richards tells the NME he snorted his father's ashes with a sprinkling of cocaine.

Also down Leith way, another of Welsh's female characters has a habit. Not of the drug variety, but habit as in nun's apparel. It is her outfit of choice when she is having sex with her parish priest. This may sound familiar this week.

Events come in threes so we can expect one more of Mr Welsh's fantastic fictions to come to pass. My money is on the sodomy and bestiality. I will be scanning the Edinburgh Evening News for reports of a chap being "bummed" (as it was so elegantly put in Wedding Belles) on Princes Street by a Staffordshire bull terrier.

CHANNEL 4 also treated us last week to Eunuchs, a documentary about men who had happily agreed a severance deal with their testicles. One of them had been so keen on the de-dangling process that he did it himself with what looked like a huge pair of nutcrackers.

Male viewers will have crossed their legs and asked the simple question: why? We will never understand but some of the blokes who have had the operation speak very highly of it.

RADIO 4 seems to be getting as gritty as Channel 4. I switched on to hear a well-loved theme tune fade away and an announcer say in caring tones: "If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in The Archers please get in touch with the BBC helpline." I have lost the plot Archers-wise and I'm not sure if I want to get up to speed. But I fear the worst. Don't tell me Deirdre Barlow has run away from Coronation Street and committed suicide by throwing herself into a threshing machine in Ambridge.

IRISH Republican sympathisers in Edinburgh have decided to call a halt to their annual march. The James Connolly Society say they are doing so after 20 years because of the changing political situation in Northern Ireland and efforts to curb sectarianism in Scotland. Some 317 years after events on the Boyne, it would be music to the ears of most of us in Scotland if the Orange marchers would come to a similar conclusion.

This is an unlikely scenario this side of the quatercentenary celebrations of the battle. At least the Orange Order and the Catholic church are in dialogue these days. There is an anecdote that grand master Ian Wilson was explaining to Glasgow archbishop Mario Conti how trouble at marches came from hangers-on, many of them inflamed by strong drink. Mr Wilson referred to them as the Buckie Brigade. Archbishop Conti, who spent many years in the northeast of Scotland, replied: "I didn't realise they came from as far away as that."

ERIC and Annie were a devoted couple who always said when it was time to go, they wanted to go together. Eric died the other week at the age of 92. Annie died five days later at 88.

The family organised a joint funeral. They tried to find a way which would allow them to be together in death as in life. Our society's attitudes to the funeral ritual made this impossible; something about health and safety. So Eric and Annie went in separate coffins but in the same hearse to the same farewell service and celebration of their lives.

Their son tells me it was a wonderful day, made the more complete by Rev Peter Davidge, minister of St Thomas Church of Scotland in Gallowgate, Glasgow. The Rev Davidge didn't know Eric and Annie but he spent three hours talking to the family getting to know about them.

A double funeral has the capacity for double the amount of grief. As the minister told Eric and Annie's story and the couple had their last wish, it was doubly uplifting.