KEY POINTS:
A new website is broadcasting the excitement of maturing cheese 24 hours a day. Cheesemakers at the Westcombe Dairy in Somerset, England, came up with the idea as an advertising campaign. The highlight of the day is about 10am local time when the wheel of cheese is turned. Farmer Tom Calver said: "We've had 47,000 hits on our website, so somebody must like it somewhere." (Source: www.cheddarvision.tv)
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Lois White, of Te Atatu, writes: "For generations women have been proud to preserve summer fruit in glass jars for the winter. But not, it seems, any more. Preserving seals have disappeared from supermarket shelves. You can buy new jars and even screw bands, but what use are they without the essential seals?" Email Sideswipe if you know where to buy preserving seals.
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How's this for delusions of greatness: Describing how she feels about finishing the last Harry Potter book, J.K. Rowling writes on her website: "'It would concern the reader little, perhaps, to know how sorrowfully the pen is laid down at the close of a two-years' imaginative task; or how an author feels as if he were dismissing some portion of himself into the shadowy world, when a crowd of the creatures of his brain are going from him for ever,' reads the passage from Dickens' preface to David Copperfield." Adds Rowling: "To which I can only sigh, try 17 years, Charles."
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Neil McGough was interested in the giant dragonfly in Friday's Sideswipe. "It is indeed a New Zealand native, known as a 'devil's darning needle' (or Uropetala carovei if you want to impress the neighbours)," he says. "I know only three people who have seen one. Their greatest enemy is probably our own citizens who assume they are some dreaded invader from the darkest Amazon or somewhere and kill them. A good friend of mine found one and called DoC, which appeared to know nothing of the creature and asked him to capture it and bring it in. Being a smart insect, it had scarpered by the time he got off the phone."
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And as if to prove Neil's point: "Great photo of a dragonfly in Friday's Sideswipe," says David Willetts. "They do bite. When I was a teenager, one landed on my arm on the banks of the West Coast's Arahura River and gave a good nip. A beautiful creature, but after being bitten I chased it along the bank hurling rocks and abuse at it."
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A British teenager has had a picture of a full English breakfast tattooed onto his head - bacon, eggs, sausages, beans, and a full set of cutlery. Dayne Gilbey, 19, from Coventry, spent six hours under the needle of tattoo artist Blane Dickinson after answering an ad for a willing victim. "My friends and family keep asking me why I'm doing this," Gilbey said. "For me it's just something different which has never been done before." Dickinson, 32, said: "I first had this idea four years ago so I'm glad to have finally found someone brave, or perhaps unhinged, enough to do it." For his next job, Dickinson wants someone willing to have their own face tattooed on the back of their head.
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Starting this month Sideswipe will link to a humorous, satirical or simply strange video clips selected from the infinite mount of nothingness hosted on YouTube and the like. The very best online videos will be carefully chosen and hosted on Ana's online magazine Spare Room and shared with Sideswipe readers every day.
Today's Video Webpick: This clip is from a real cooking show. Today viewers are being shown step-by-step how to make 'Squirrel Melts'. Yes, you heard right. First take you son hunting….Black comedy genius. Watch it here
