Sideswipe: No swimming or diving

The warning sign at Russell Wharf doesn't mention backflipping.

Does anyone have any suggestions to sort out our problem?" asks a desperate reader. "We have a cool community here in our Ponsonby neighbourhood - long term residents who share respect, consideration and friendship. But this has been shattered by a new entrant. Cars with thumping exhausts, young people shrieking and shouting at all hours, bottles strewn everywhere, broken glass on the footpath, drama and arguments at 3am out on the street. Over 20 noise control complaints so far and they only moved in a few months ago and no co-operation from the parents who live out west. There are families with babies here, elderly people, and folk who have go to work. We are not party poopers but this is a nightmare."

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A mother writes: "This year I will not be covering my children's books. I had this revelation when I went to fill the book order for my four primary school aged kids. At around $4 for a roll of patterned Duraseal which you'd be lucky to cover three books with and an average of 13 exercise books per kid, my bill would be $70! More than double the cost of the books!"

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Colin Muir reckons TV One did a great job ruining a great television event. "Spielberg would be so pleased to hear you managed 7min 30sec of Band of Brothers to 3min 45sec adverts. I was raving to my fiancée about Band of Brothers for weeks, but after that we're going to borrow the box set. We just can't sit through another full episode of adverts with some quality TV scattered through to keep the viewer happy. What a joke!"

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A ham with its own DNA certificate is being sold in London's Selfridges for £1800 ($3995). The 7kg leg of Iberico ham comes from one of 50 pigs reared in Extremadura in western Spain on acorns and roots to give the ham a distinctive flavour. The ham was salted, then cured for three years before going on sale in a hand-made wooden box wrapped in an apron made by a Spanish tailor. "Connoisseurs will appreciate the melt-in-the-mouth texture of this truly amazing Spanish ham," said Selfridges fresh food buyer Andrew Cavanna. "The leg may seem to have a large price tag, but when you think about the amount of care taken from breeding right through to the curing, it is amazing value."

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A reader writes: "To the girl in the white dress who threw her bottle against the rocks then frolicked around taking photos with a friend of the Goat Island Marine reserve on Friday January 8 around 6pm: I thought you would be pleased to know it did not smash and get washed into the sand to slice the feet of some of the hundreds of people that walk there each day to admire the fish and enjoy the nature of the reserve. It was not hard for me to retrieve it and carry it back to the car park and put it in the bin."

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See today's Herald cartoon