Sideswipe

Being the first booze shop in the phone book may not be the best thought-out strategy for this Mt Albert Rd retailer

A letter to the Waitomo News last week suggests the armed offenders squad needs to be more focused on public safety: "5am ... I am woken to, 'Come out with your hands on your head! We have a search warrant to search these premises'," writes "Appalled of Piopio". The woman saw police and the armed offenders squad on her neighbours' front lawn. "I went to wake my eldest girl ... She peeked out her curtain and said , 'Ooh, Mum, there's a man out my window having a pee'," reads the letter. A few minutes later, the peeing man was gone but his gun was unmanned and leaning up against her hedge. "He was at the back of my section 23 metres from his rifle where he had left it unattended for 20 minutes ... I could have run out to the gun. I was closer to it than he was." Waikato police operations manager Inspector John Kelly told the Waitomo News the need to urinate does occur when staff work for long periods in cordon positions and apologises if it was done indiscreetly. Regarding the unmanned rifle, Kelly suggested the writer might have seen "another item leaning against the hedge".

* * *

Shopping at Albany Pak'n Save, Helena Smith was surprised to see real chicken feather dusters hanging up for sale. "All feathers make me wonder these days, so I read the label. Made in China. From vaccinated hens? Or are they sterilised at Customs by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry? If so, do I still need to take all the precautions against avian flu, or is New Zealand way ahead on the case? Think I'll skip the housework for a bit, anyway."

* * *

Time on their side? The Rolling Stones are heading our way. Here's what the Herald said about the concert by the English "pop singers" who played Auckland's Civic on this day in 1966:

"Scores of police and security men were on hand after the English pop singers had been mauled during their act in Wellington on Monday night but they were hardly needed.

"The Rolling Stones performed in the Civic Theatre where the audience was excluded from the ground floor and restricted to the two galleries ...

"As the group's blasting, quaking sound throbbed to a crescendo several girls had to be pulled down as they tried to perch on a balcony rail high above the floor ...

"As the Rolling Stones left quietly by a side door after their show one of them was humming faint snatches of a song ... was it, perhaps, Thank Heaven for Little Girls?"

* * *

Another offensive episode of South Park? New Zealand's own Wing, who has recorded nine albums such as Dancing Queen By Wing and Wing Sings Elvis, appears in the cartoon tonight.