KEY POINTS:
Paul Mason writes: "Many years ago my mother broke her arm in a very strange way, and got very little sympathy, in fact the medical people at the hospital couldn't stop laughing. As she was going into the toilet she slipped and fell forward, putting her hand out on to the toilet to stop her fall. Unfortunately her arm went down into the bowl and up the S bend, breaking it. The Medical staff at the hospital referred to her as the lavatory lady."
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New Zealander Jacquie Thomas, a single mum who is $100,000 in debt with no assets, has set herself a very public challenge - to make her first million by the time her daughter starts school in March 2008. She plans to make the cash through a website called the Millionaire Mummy Project (www.millionairemummy.co.nz) by selling her tragic financial "warts and all story" and her journey to a million to subscribers in instalments. Those who sign up will pay $49 for a year's worth of dirt. A former Woman's Day columnist (Skills for Living Life), Thomas is a psychologist and life coach and author of a book on NZ Women in Business called Go Girl Go!. According to her self-titled website she has another book in the pipeline called All About You which offers "quick tips on getting more of what you want in your life, and less of what you don't want, today!" She'll need about 20,000 subscribers to reach her goal, but only 2000 to become debt free.
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Dancing with the Stars contestant Michael Laws did not break his toe on a piece of wood. The inanimate assaulting object was in fact a solid steel bar. Laws practices his shimmying at the Wanganui Darts League Hall, which is fitted out with oche distancing bars (the throwing line for players) and Laws stubbed his toe on that, hence the break. Now, in the tradition of Tana's Handbag, the folk from the darts club have removed the offending oche bar and are auctioning it off on Trade Me, with all proceeds going to Laws' DWTS charity, the Cancer Society.
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A reader writes: "While travelling north to holiday with friends in Mangawhai, we stopped in Orewa to visit the wine shop to buy a Central Otago pinot noir as a gift for our hosts. After unsuccessfully locating any, the shop attendant offered to help me where we both searched the pinot noir section to no avail until I noticed on the top shelf and pointed with great satisfaction to what looked like a metallic boxed bottle of wine with 'Milford Sound' printed on the outside. I declared "I didn't know they produced pinot noir in Fiordland" when he replied, looking at me with total disbelief "They don't - that's our speaker system".
