Sideswipe: September 12: Pedestrian parking

Pedestrian parking at Northcross Shopping Centre on Saturday afternoon. Good one.

First date fails the Potter test

"I think there's a first date going on near me and it's a disaster," tweets @ericsmithrocks.

"You know Harry Potter?"

"Not really."

"The movies?"

"No."

"I'm a Hufflepuff."

"Congrats?"

"GET OUT OF THERE SWEET HUFFLEPUFF."

Chat with the queen drags a little bit

"I liked the item about Henry Cooper and the Queen," writes a reader. Here's another ... Australian cinematographer Dean Semler, who won an Oscar for Dances With Wolves, was one of the Hollywood fraternity invited to meet the Queen on her visit to the United States. Semler explains: "I said I was director of photography, to which she replied, 'Oh, how terribly interesting. Actually, I have a brother-in-law who is a photographer.' I replied, 'Oh, how terribly coincidental. I have a brother-in-law who's a queen.' She moved on without saying another word."

Delightfully honest label

Delightfully honest label.

Dickens of a defence

Robert Kearns, the inventor of intermittent windshield wipers, tried to sell his idea to the auto industry and was turned away. When they began showing up on new cars, he sued the manufacturers and won millions. He was initially offered an amount to settle - much less than what he was eventually awarded but refused. For him it was more important to set a precedent in patent law. Kearns also acted as his own lawyer to make sure that any money he won wouldn't line the pockets of some big law firm. In court the automotive industry's main argument was that his invention couldn't be trademarked because no part of it couldn't have been acquired before he invented it. Kearns, during a lunch break, ran to a library and got a copy of Charles Dickens' Tale of Two Cities, when the court reconvened he read the first sentence, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times ... " aloud for the court and proceeded to argue that Tale of Two Cities can be attributed to Dickens not because none of the words Dickens used couldn't have been found before Dickens' career but because Dickens was the person who took those words and put them in the order that gave them meaning. Kearns proceeded to win that trial. (Reddit user Nomadiccyborg)