Sideswipe: Hard to swallow

Photos / Supplied

Tim spotted this peculiar job on Trade Me (pictured, top).

Familiar feature

Warwick came across this picture on ebookers.com (pictured, bottom). "Looks a lot like Cathedral Cove, don't you think? They're trying to sell holidays to Thailand!"

Carpark madness continues

Andrew Stevenson writes: "If your correspondent thought that the parking in un-designated carparks at Kelly Tarlton's was bad, he should visit the Les Mills carpark on Sale St during peak hours to see about 30-40 examples of similar or worse. It once took me 14 manoeuvres to get out of my parking space."

Put that in your pipe

A reader writes: "Keegan Purdy might like to know that the pipe-smoking baby advert was taken seriously by the NZ advertising standards watchdog, which will be making a ruling shortly. Yes, it was humorous and maybe well intended too, but when it comes to the crunch we can't legally use images of kids smoking or drinking to advertise stuff."

Random act of kindness

Josephine says: "Thank you to the kind woman who paid for the rest of my groceries when I didn't have enough money at the Mt Eden Countdown on Tuesday! It was the most generous thing a complete stranger has done for me. Even the woman at the checkout looked blown away. Thank you."

Dead pan humour

"One of our women members arrived at the Auckland Potters Centre in Onehunga yesterday to find the toilet door jemmied open and the cistern gone," writes Peter Lange. "The toilet pan is still there, so in spite of a shortage of clues, at least that was something to go on. It's a bog-standard cistern that sounds like a jet taking off when it is filling (just in case you hear this new sound in your neighbourhood - might help to flush the thieves out)."

Wedding ring found, camera lost

Sideswipe's holiday lost and found service (because it really sucks to lose stuff):

* At The Coffee Club by SkyCity at 11.30pm on New Year's Eve, Sally found a gold wedding ring with engraving. If you can identify the message on the ring, she will happily return it, phone 021-594-451 ... "That is, unless you threw it away on purpose, then I guess it's mine," she adds.
* Lost on New Year's Day evening: A Fujifilm A850 digital camera (black and chrome with a grey strap), either in Bellini's at the Hilton Auckland or in a convenience store called Fix, near the ferry terminal. If found, please phone (09) 435-6464 or email m.fraser1@xtra.co.nz. It has priceless memories on it.