Sideswipe: August 8: Punctuation matters

Punctuation matters. A sign at a North Shore primary school car park that suggests our education system isn't doing too well.

Groundbreaking show

I Love Lucy ran from 1951 to 1957, and was pretty groundbreaking for having a female lead and that she was married to someone of a different ethnicity. In fact, according to Mental Floss the TV network CBS didn't think Americans would buy that Lucy was married to a foreigner. "When CBS approached Lucille Ball with the offer of turning her popular radio show My Favorite Husband into a television show, she was agreeable with one condition: that her real-life husband, Desi Arnaz, would be cast in the role of her spouse (played on the radio by Richard Denning). The network baulked - there was no way that American viewers would accept average housewife Liz Cooper (her character's name on the radio series) being married to a "foreign" man with an indecipherable accent. Never mind the fact that Lucy and Desi had been married more than a decade; such a 'mixed' marriage was unbelievable."

Dishwasher stuck

"My sister-in-law and her husband recently (about two years ago) renovated their house, and bought a dishwasher for the first time," writes Terry Fleming. "The first time they used it, it was great until they tried to take the dishes out. It seemed the door was stuck fast. The husband got some tools out and proceeded to try and prise the door open. No luck, so the wife finally read the instruction book and found that they had accidentally pushed the child lock button!"

Parking nightmare

"Commuter parking has become so bad in this Grey Lynn street that Auckland Transport is introducing drastic parking restrictions," writes Christopher of Grey Lynn.

Dishwasher No 2

"I too had a dishwasher eureka moment about six months after buying my new Bosch dishwasher," writes Lynn. "Reaching for the top rack drawer while looking for something in the sink, I pulled out another drawer which I didn't even know existed - it's very slim and flat and lies above the main top-rack drawer. It's a knife rack and is fantastic for flat lids, knives and large utensils. And all this time I'd been handwashing them! Wonder who else has one of these hiding in their machine?"