Top five columns of 2019: Sideswipe

Sideswipe columnist, Ana Samways. Photo / Brett Phibbs

As we say goodbye to 2019 and welcome in 2020, it's a good time to catch up on the very best of the Herald columnists we enjoyed reading over the last 12 months. From politics to sport, from business to entertainment and lifestyle, these are the voices and views our audience loved the most. Today it's the top five from Ana Samway's Sideswipe.

Must've been Meat Week at Pak'nSave

A Countdown truck parked up outside Pak'n Save? Must've been Meat Week, according to one Sideswipe reader. Other highlights from the day included children singing during a flight and a particularly amusing newspaper correction.

Throwing some shade at beach-hoggers

A reader noticed an empty sun tent at Mangawhai Heads one Sunday in January. It had allegedly been there all day Saturday as well. "Empty for most of the time ... I've heard of sun lounge-hoggers but beach-hoggers? Meanwhile, many other families with young kids were denied shade from the trees behind just so this family could come and go as they pleased."

Too close for comfort

A picture snapped by a reader of a garage very tightly built against a house in Wellsford topped this well-read edition of Sideswipe. In the same column, tweeters shared what their jobs would be if they fulfilled childhood ambitions and a reader sent in a picture of a "vintage" crate full of DB Double Red he'd been hoarding for 35 years.

Duck army chows down

In January, a reader couldn't believe all the fresh bread left outside Bakers Delight in Remuera on New Year's Day. "By the time I had finished my early evening walk, an army of ducks had started their march from the creek in Portland Rd to the Remuera Mission for a free New Year's lunch! Seriously, though, a lot of people on the breadline would have loved a slice of Remuera's offerings."

Only in New Zealand

It's a sign that could only appear in New Zealand: "Bombs only from green area - check depth before jumping" and it topped another popular Sideswipe column from January. In other news, a Welsh town challenged Dunedin's claim to the world's steepest street - and we all know how that worked out in the end.