Sideswipe: October 9: Pun dumped in Alfriston

Pun dumped in Alfriston.

Cake cat-astrophe at afternoon tea

"When our now 54-year-old daughter was little, my wife baked a cake in order to entertain my former bible class teacher after he and his wife had returned from the mission field," writes a reader from Albany. "Having left the kitchen window open to let the cake cool down, unbeknown to her, the neighbour's kitten had done a Superman leap and had first go at the cake! What to do? No time to make another cake, so she cut off the part eaten and dished it up. As a nurse, she figured there would be no danger in so doing. Enter darling daughter and with total innocence, asked 'Is that the cake the cat ate, Mum'?"

Light bulb moment

Angela writes: "I recently took my car in for a WOF and the mechanic told me I needed a new right indicator light and a new rear licence plate light for which he quoted me $50-$60. Now, even though I don't know anything about cars, this did not sound right to me, so I took my car somewhere else for another quote, and I am so pleased to have found Johns and Gee on Gundry St in central Auckland, where I met Robert who got it all sorted out and then didn't charge me for it, telling me it was just a small job and he was happy to help. Thank you Robert and your friendly team, I know where I will always take my car in the future."

Good neighbours don't grow on trees

Meanest Neighbours (Friday's Sideswipe) sounded familiar to one reader. "Also avid gardeners, they hated to see anyone else's greenery visually encroaching on their space", she explains. "When we were at work, they would 'trim' our passionfruit vine along our mutual fence line. It wouldn't have bothered us if it had been hanging over their side (which it wasn't) but they had the cheek to cut it back to about 60cm below the fence line on our side of the fence! Two seasons in a row they also stripped our two feijoa trees bare, presumably to make yummy jam."

Geddit?

Wordsmith's wisdom

The utterly irrefutable logic of the young ...

Mr 7: Mum, What's a humanitarian ?

Mr 6 [interrupting]: I know Mum, it's like a vegetarian but they eat humans.

"That's lovely...that's better"

Retro wine marketing at its best.

Good read

"OkCupid data shows that even when men are in their late 40s, they carry on looking at the profiles of women age 20 to 24 (women, by contrast look at older men's profiles as they get older). Where do 50-year-old men get this strange impression that they could date a 23-year-old? Perhaps it's their TV screens. When New York magazine looked at the careers of 10 leading men, it found that as they aged, their onscreen love interests didn't. Take Liam Neeson. In 1990, he appeared alongside Frances McDormand, who was five years younger than he. By the time he starred in "Third Person" in 2013, the 61-year-old Neeson's lover was played by 29-year-old Olivia Wilde. We are socialised into thinking that men are like wine, they get better with time. Whereas women are like cheese, they get blue veins and start to stink. Full story here.

Emergency evacuation from high rise buildings

It looks like a pretty good idea at first glance, but what could be some problems...What of vastly different sized people? Would people in a panic tumble down too close together? You now there would be at least one fool who would try it head first...

Got a Sideswipe? Send your pictures, links and anecdotes to Ana at ana.samways@nzherald.co.nz