Sideswipe

Celia Morrison is waiting to be rubber-stamped as a New Zealand citizen. She wonders if her medical records will help prove she's patriotic: "Not sure what the glue is they use on the stickers that are to be found on apples. But it is very good! I have just undergone a colonoscopy, with the thorough scouring that goes with it beforehand. "During the procedure heard the specialist and nurse laughing. I discovered later that they had seen an apple sticker adhering to my insides showing the words 'Made in New Zealand' very clearly. As I was made in England and about to apply for my citizenship here, do you think the photograph given to me will speed the paperwork up?"

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Stuck for something to write in the card tomorrow? Some ideas from a Washington Post competition which asked readers for a rhyme with the most romantic first line but an appalling second line. A select few:

I thought that I could love no other.

Until, that is, I met your brother.

Or: Of loving beauty you float with grace.

If only you could hide your face.

Or perhaps: My darling, my lover, my beautiful wife: Marrying you screwed up my life.

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A treasury lackey has taken the brunt of Herald columnist Fran O'Sullivan's description of National MP John Key as "once one of the legendary big swinging dicks of international foreign exchange". The Treasury official seconded to the Opposition finance spokesman's office has since inherited the noble title of "little swinging dick".

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Bolivia's Foreign Minister says coca leaves, the raw material for cocaine, are so nutritious they should be included on school breakfast menus. "Coca has more calcium than milk. It should be part of the school breakfast," Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca was quoted as saying in the newspaper La Razon. The new leftist Government of Evo Morales, Bolivia's first indigenous president, has vowed to promote the legal uses of the coca plant, which is revered in Andean culture and is commonly chewed or made into tea. Morales, himself a former coca farmer, has pledged to fight the drugs trade but at the same time protect the cultivation of coca in Bolivia - the world's third-biggest cocaine producer after Colombia and Peru. A coca leaf weighing 100 grams contains 18.9 calories of protein, 45.8mg of iron, 1540mg of calcium and vitamins A, B1, B2, E and C, which is more than most nuts, according to a 1975 study by a group of Harvard University professors.