Sideswipe

Red card to Les Mills Auckland and TV3. Both are displaying the Union Jack in connection with the Lions' tour (Les Mills in its main gym and TV3 in its latest trailer for the test with NZ Maori). They have forgotten it is the British and Irish Lions and the Union Jack is not the flag of the Republic of Ireland. How would they like the All Blacks to be represented by the Australian flag?

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Jacqui Vowles writes: "My husband's Telecom cellphone bought two years ago has been a source of frustration because the Telecom signal at our home varies between very weak and nonexistent. Making a call requires a trip to the garden or out to the middle of the street. Fed up, he bought an earlier model on TradeMe and had it changed over this week. We were discussing the changeover while I ratted through the freezer looking for something for dinner. But when he picked up the now surplus model, the signal was strong. I put the freezer lid down and the signal disappeared. Up-down-up-down. Sure enough, the lid was acting as an aerial. A bit more experimentation and we found that a fish slice and a slotted spoon held either side of the phone gave the same results."

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If you've had a parking ticket issued in the wee small hours, instead of pointing the finger at your local council, you might want to look closer to home. A Mt Wellington reader who parked on his own grass verge, clear of the footpath, while trying to ferry his heavily pregnant wife and elderly grandmother inside on a stormy evening and was hit with $80 worth of parking tickets at 3am might be interested to know how it all works.

Parking officers on late-night ticketing sprees are responding to complaints, usually from someone living close by, who objects to the communal grass verge being marred, lowering the tone of the neighbourhood.

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Sideswipe ashamed of own cultural ignorance: A reader writes: "I might be wrong, but I don't think that the shop sign featured on Tuesday does present an 'odd combination of services' [Restaurant catering in-house on-site ... Wedding Birthday Hair Cutting Funeral Special Occasion]. It seems pretty clear that it is a caterer advertising different occasions that it caters for and the 'hair cutting', rather than being an 'odd' service, is in fact one of the special occasions. I know that Niue Islanders have a hair-tcutting ceremony as a rite of passage for young boys."

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Who's behind those National Party billboards? The blue/red Brash/Clarke boards were placed by Rainmakers Media & Advertising of Parnell. Rainmakers told Admedia magazine that the artwork and copy was conceived and executed in-house by the Nats with help from their own (unnamed) graphic artist. "Who would've thought they could come up with something this creative all on their own?" quipped editor David Gapes.