KEY POINTS:
After reading the article in the Herald last week about the old wine in new bottles for the Rugby World Cup, Alyson Gates of Whangarei sent in this picture. "Our son, Les, was a member of the New Zealand Youth Rugby side in the late 1990s and he brought us back one of these bottles of wine which he purchased somewhere in the south of France."
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Candy, the victim of a serial prankster, finally got her own back. "Many years ago I worked with a prankster who would continually leave things on my car (finger smudges/lipstick notes). I got his home address from a friend and went there in the wee hours one morning. I wrapped his car over and under with a huge roll of commercial-grade cling film, stuck army toys to the whole top with globs of toothpaste, then covered every inch of the cling film with baby oil. I never had to worry about him pranking my car after that."
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Bob Wilson of Glendowie writes: There was a very arrogant young law graduate working in the marketing department of a large multinational oil company in London. This young man decided to buy himself a bowler hat from one of the leading hatters in the West End. This was in the 1960s when a bowler hat, with a rolled umbrella and pin-stripe suit, was the perceived picture of commercial success. His office colleagues became tired of his poncing around and organised a collection among themselves to buy an identical hat but in a slightly smaller size. Over a period of about 10 days the two bowler hats were surreptitiously exchanged at random times. The joke was not revealed to the wearer until he became distraught after being told by his colleagues that he must have a very rare condition which manifested itself as a "recurring palsy of the head muscles". He was on the verge of consulting his GP.
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A 22-year-old American man was arrested on Sunday after an early-morning bath in the historic Barcaccia fountain at the foot of Rome's Spanish Steps, an Italian news agency reported. The man stripped and bathed in the 17th-century baroque fountain in front of a crowd of tourists, before being led away by police. He is now facing charges of committing an obscene act.
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A new channel in Germany will broadcast a 24-hour-a-day, seven-days-a-week television channel devoted exclusively to ageing, dying and mourning. According to Der Spiegel, EosTV will broadcast documentaries about cemeteries, shows about changing funeral culture and helpful tips about finding a retirement home or nursing care. "Over 800,000 people died in Germany last year," said Wolf Tilmann Schneider, the channel's founder. "Multiply that by four and you have the rough number of people directly affected by those deaths. There are also 2.1 million people in Germany needing care in their old age. There are millions of people confronting the issues of getting older and dying." Kerstin Gernig, spokeswoman for the National Association of Funeral Homes, said there had been a shift in the way people approached death and burial. More are taking advantage of anonymous burials. Forest cemeteries are likewise becoming more popular, as are internet graveyards. And the church no longer plays such a large role in the death industry.
