Sideswipe: December 29: Lettuce shoot dogs

Drama in your leafy greens.

Caning credits

"In the 70s at senior school we had a sadistic headmaster," writes a reader. "To us kids it seemed that if he did not cane at least one kid a day to get his fix he went a bit loopy. My brother Jon delivered a note to the headmaster's office and was immediately caned by the headmaster who afterwards asked him the nature of his transgression.

When he gave the head the teacher's note he realised Jon was not there for punishment. The head solved this problem by telling him 'well boy, you are now in credit'. Sure enough, later when he was up for a legitimate caning, the head recognised him and he was told he was free to go."

What untruth did you believe for the longest time?

1. "Until I was almost a teenager, I believed that whatever was playing on the radio, the orchestra, group, band were actually in the studio. I often wondered where they kept the queues of performers waiting their turn! It was a more innocent age."

2. "Once when we were in the car on our summer holiday, my older brother pointed out a survey trig station and told me it was a leftover alien spacecraft. You often see these in hill country New Zealand and for many years after I spotted them out the car window and believed them to be just that."

3. "As a young child I had to go with my mother to a large fabrics shop in Wellington which had tiled flooring with different coloured squares. The shop lady said if I stood on a white square a crocodile would jump out and eat me. It took me a very long time to negotiate my way around the shop, jumping from coloured square to coloured square, trying not to step on any white square. I remember I was actually terrified."

"When you've got a ton of work to do by Derek, and it's already quarter to Linda," tweets Glenn Moore @TheNewsatGlen.