Sideswipe

This French-made product manages to further demonise the humble, warm-as-toast hoodie.

Scott, a reader from Onehunga, would like to express, on behalf of his bedridden grandmother, his amazement at the exceptional dedication to the job by one Auckland real estate agent. He writes: "A sales agent visited my grandmother on three occasions wishing to list her house. The agent was informed that she was not interested. The same sales agent then learnt of my grandmother's terminal illness and visited her in hospital. How far will a sales agent go these days? He must have been rubbing his hands in glee at the prospect of a pending estate sale. It's comforting to know some agents will go the extra mile."

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Geoff Hopkins has found a cure for bird flu, as published in the Western Australia Country Women's Institute Cook Book and Handy Hints of 1936. "To cure flu in fowls dip a feather in Stockholm tar and touch their drinking water with it. This forms a film on the water and adheres to the beak. If this is done several times a day the epidemic will be checked and all cases cured within a week."

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Children will read the following in Peta's (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) pro-fish leaflet: "Imagine that a man dangles a piece of candy in front of you ... As you grab the candy, a huge metal hook stabs through your hand and you're ripped off the ground. You fight to get away, but it doesn't do any good ... That would be an awful trick to play on someone, wouldn't it?"

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National Director of Catholic Communications Lyndsay Freer would like to dissociate herself and her church from a bogus letter drop in Mt Albert and Sandringham. The letter claims to reveal the third secret of Fatima, among other things, and suggests that earthquake, nuclear war and other horrendous cataclysms are about to be unleashed on the earth by a vengeful and angry God before the end of the year. She writes: "Though couched in poor English and in desperate need of spell-checking, the letter purports to be a message from the Virgin Mary, and thus might be supposed to originate within the Catholic Church. We would like to warn anyone receiving any such rubbish that it springs from the mind of credulous simpletons and certainly has no official Catholic endorsement whatsoever."