Last week British barrister Jo Moore's mum got a tattoo. "An actual tattoo," Moore declared on Twitter. "I'm still in shock," she added while supplying the following detail: "She's been drunk twice, ever ... She thinks 'crap' is quite a bad swear word ... She gotthe tattoo on a Women's Institute bus trip ... It's of a ball of wool and knitting needles ... 'Bat out of Hell was playing while I got it done,' she said ... 'I'm old now, I can do whatever I like'."
Seven generations from Augusta Bunge
The most generations alive in a single family has been seven. The youngest great-great-great-great-grandparent being Augusta Bunge aged 109 years 97 days, followed by her daughter, 89, her granddaughter, 70, her great-granddaughter, 52, her great-great-granddaughter, 33 and her great-great-great-granddaughter 15 on the birth of her great-great-great-great-grandson on January 21, 1989. (Guinessworldrecords.com)
A reader saw this on Queen St and balked, writes a reader. "Auckland Council say they want to make Auckland a more liveable city and one of their tools is to create pocket parks around the city.
It sounds good but if this is the result I really have to wonder what's the point? I shudder to think what it actually cost to design, approve, and install this."
Message in a bottle reached Auckland
In March 1999, Steve Gowan was fishing for cod off Essex when he dredged up a ginger beer bottle with a screw-on rubber stopper. Inside he found a note: "Sir or madam, youth or maid, Would you kindly forward the enclosed letter and earn the blessing of a poor British soldier on his way to the front this ninth day of September, 1914. Private T. Hughes."
The enclosed letter read: "Dear Wife, I am writing this note on this boat and dropping it into the sea just to see if it will reach you. If it does, sign this envelope on the right hand bottom corner where it says receipt. Put the date and hour of receipt and your name where it says signature and look after it well. Ta ta sweet, for the present.Your Hubby."
Private Thomas Hughes, 26, of Stockton-on-Tees, had dropped the bottle into the English Channel in 1914 as he left for France. He was killed two days later. His wife Elizabeth and daughter moved to New Zealand, where Elizabeth died in 1979. Gowan delivered the letter to the daughter, Emily Crowhurst, then 86-years-old, in Auckland that May. Just 2-years-old when her father left, she said, "It touches me to know his passage reached a goal. I think he would be very proud it had been delivered."
