KEY POINTS:
Armed police in Oxfordshire, England, have been criticised for the "heavy-handed" response to a party-goer dressed like a serial killer. Kevin Oakes (20) accessorised his Jason from the Friday the 13th outfit with a bladeless chainsaw. Police sent armed police and a helicopter to the scene which Oakes felt was a bit of an over-reaction. He told the BBC: "I saw the helicopter and I thought they were having a good laugh. Then suddenly all the armed police turned up and started shouting at me to drop the weapon. They were heavy-handed and getting all wound up. They were just quite rude. There were children laughing at them which didn't help. I didn't even have the engine running on the chainsaw." Of his choice of outfit Oakes said he was after something different for a friend's party. "Everyone else was going as Cinderella or pirates or vicars so I thought I'd go as a murderer," he added.
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Pam Sims writes: "When my car engine coughed and then died on me in the fast lane of the Pakuranga Highway one day last week, I thought I showed reasonable presence of mind by steering it (safely) across two lanes of traffic before coasting to a stop in a narrow bus stop layby. I put on my hazard lights and rang the AA. Two men who whizzed past towing a large boat were not impressed. 'It's a [expletive] bus stop,' bawled the passenger out of the open window. (What did they think I was doing? Having a chat?) So to those two and to all the other drivers who honked, swore, swerved and passed me as close as they could without actually wrenching off my wing mirror, I'd like to say thank you and I hope you had a nice day too!"
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A reader shares some stag do hijinks: "I know a certain someone, lets call him Deano, who slept in his van after the stag do and his mates pushed it down the road and into the church gates at Leigh. He was woken the next morning by the congregation knocking on his window."
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Stephanie read in Sideswipe this week that the Property Press would no longer be delivered to North Shore mailboxes from mid-May. "Thank goodness for that!" she exclaims. "That waste of paper only went straight from my mailbox to my recycling each week. Now how do I stop the pesky real estate agents from wasting more precious trees by putting those annoying 'I've just sold your neighbour's house, would you like me to sell yours?' leaflets in my mailbox too?"
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Today's Webpick: If Facebook was real life, here's how it would be. Watch it here.
These are the very best online videos from Ana's online magazine Spare Room.
