Sideswipe

Fashion's darling moves into mobility aids for the elderly? Nah, someone's idea of a joke on Trade Me.|

Don Brash had been scheduled to watch an umu demonstration of traditional cooking at the Teuila cultural festival in the Samoan capital, Apia, but failed to turn up. A spokesman was quoted as saying his party had run out of time. It was a pity, the Samoa Observer said, "because Dr Brash would have had the opportunity to see the cooking of breadfruit that his country no longer accepts from Samoa". When the contents of the "tourists-only" umu were shared out, the crab, taro and green bananas went to the nearby Government Buildings, with two suckling pigs and a selection of other traditional food. The tourists left behind shared pork, palusami - and breadfruit.

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US author Jim Kuntsler was in New Zealand recently for the Digital Earth Conference and to promote his book, The Long Emergency - his take on the chaos we'll experience as the world runs short of oil. Since returning home he's written a blog about his time here, in which he comments first on Auckland: "Not a handsome city. What little architectural history it might have possessed had been mostly destroyed in a post-World War II rampage of modernism and automobile retrofit. The few extant pre-war bungalow neighbourhoods are cute (and supernaturally overpriced), but the newer districts of post-war ranch houses show almost as much genius for horrifying banality of design as their American counterparts." On car use: "Right up there with the champs of the world (US, Canada, and Australia). In fact, the week before I arrived, the Government announced that the passenger rail service between Auckland and Wellington, the capital city, was about to be discontinued. I will refrain from remarking further how unbelievably dumb that is." He liked Northland, the region, which he described as "spectacular rugged landscape lightly populated by US and European standards, with a climate like northern California, gorgeous forests studded with giant tree ferns and other weird flora in the Jurassic Park style, and countless miles of fantastically beautiful seacoast with utterly empty beaches." But he had this to say about Northland towns: "Uniformly hideous - composed solely of industrial sheds at their centres plus the usual surrounding ranch houses." And finally he talked about the prospects for Americans seeking a bolt-hole: "New Zealand has obvious appeal. Imagine California, un-******-up."

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Holey fry pan: There had to be a logical explanation for the $10 fry pan in Friday's Sideswipe. A reader who owns a similar one says, "Such a frying pan does a wonderful job of barbecuing vegetables and other small items (e.g. shrimps and other seafood) that may otherwise be lost down the gaps of a BBQ grill."