Sideswipe: Extraordinary meeting

So, will councillors be paid for two meetings? Extraordinary indeed. Photo / City Scene

The Wall Street Journal has found an unlikely consequence of Tiger Woods' recent car crash: a jump in sales of a physics book called Get a Grip on Physics by John Gribbin. The book featured in the story after being seen on the car floor in TV footage. Gribbin's theory on why Woods would have a copy: "The obvious speculation is he saw the words 'get a grip' and thought it would help with his golf grip." (Source: BBC's Web Monitor)

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Yesterday we bemoaned the fact The Shawshank Redemption was being played again on Christmas Eve on TVOne - for the third time in five years - and joked that at least it wasn't The Sound Of Music ... It turns out, TV3 is dusting off the reels of the Austrian family musical for Christmas afternoon. Thank goodness there are devices like My SKY and TiVo.

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Yesterday's story about running the gauntlet of the hand cream hawkers in malls got a huge reaction, with all readers feeling ambushed. Mall management take note: "You practically have to flatten yourself against the shop windows and slide past as fast as you can without making any eye contact or they do chase you," declares one reader. "The one time I did get trapped they tried to convince me that I didn't need to pay my bills I had to spend the money on ME by buying their product - which incidentally was only on special for that one day not to be repeated again ever ... until tomorrow that is."

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One mother has taken to thrusting her tall teenagers in front of her while they hurry past. "They're like my body guards!" she says. But Racheal combats the problem by simply telling them that I purchased the exact product last week and it is simply fabulous. "Works every time!" she says.

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Penny Brown of Sandringham has tried many different avoidance techniques: "The smile and shake of the head, the outright rude ignore, the snarl, the gazing at my shopping list, the staring in a shop window above their heads, faking an argument with my daughter, singing to myself, murderous facial expression, but they persist with a passion born, presumably, of having to score sales to earn commissions."

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Janice always takes a big breath and rushes past the hand cream mall-mafia as fast as she can. "I dare not linger and I wonder if other nearby retailers are also getting annoyed by them driving their potential customers off."

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