Sideswipe

The National Billboard campaign enjoyed great momentum around election time, but has also spawned some cutting parodies.

Sideswipe's suggestion that cycling instead of driving was not feasible for most given the distances we have to traverse, the kids we have to drop off and the shopping we have to cart around, didn't wash with Sue Worthington and her super-cycling family.

She writes: "My husband cycles from Clemows Lane, Albany, to his company, Global Tile in 81 Mays Rd Ellerslie ... each day. Rain, hail or shoddy streets, he cycles. He has had bikes rust away on him, he pounds the street so hard. And yes, I think to date he has had doors opened on him, cars turn in on him and has had the occasional over the bonnet experience.

"But the Clemows gang are a hardy lot. My son and all his mates cycle to school via the cycle lane (we had to buy the school a cycle rack to make this happen).

"So every morning they head out, bound for Kristin, Rangitoto, Albany and Pinehurst Schools. And on the weekends occasionally, we'll do the tour-du-Bays.

"One day about five boys aged 8-12 years old and myself, a mere woman, cycled from Albany to Murrays Bay, for a coffee, then up through the Bush and popping out on the East Coast Bays Rd - to the distress of golfers - then down to Milford Shopping centre - yes, to get shopping.

"Then we jumped in at the beach at Takapuna and rode wet all the way home again. Via ... you guessed it ... the cycle lane."

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Workers at a British factory making potato chips were evacuated two days running last week after bomb parts turned up in potatoes which were imported from France and Belgium, the site of battles in World War I and II.

The Scarborough plant is owned by Canada's McCain Foods, the world's largest producer of frozen fries.

The plant was emptied on Friday after a worker spotted a shell tip among the potatoes as they were being cleaned for slicing.

"The police were called and the bomb squad advised a 100 meter exclusion zone should be set up," said a McCain spokesman.

On Saturday, a hand grenade was discovered in the potatoes and the plant in northern England was evacuated again.

"The army took the device away and blew it up in a controlled explosion in a field nearby," a spokeswoman for the North Yorkshire police said.

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A reader writes: "Poor Sue Bradford seems to lack a basic grasp of the English language. The word 'smack' is onomatopoeic! It does what it says.

"The entire purpose is to inflict a small amount of pain to act as an inoculation, a small amount of pain administered now, by someone who loves the child, to deter the child from behaviour that will likely lead that child to suffer greater harm should it remain on its current course. Remove the pain, remove the purpose.

"Perhaps Ms Bradford would prefer we use a sound stroking. Assured to leave a lasting lesson in the child's mind."

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At least one judge in recent years has accepted the defence of mistaken sexual intercourse (when a man enters a dark bedroom and initiates sex with a woman he believes is his sexual partner, only to discover that it is another resident of the home). Paul Chappell, 31, raised the defence at his trial in Sydney, claiming that he (reportedly intoxicated) erroneously stumbled into bed with his new girlfriend's female housemate. Since the housemate's boyfriend was elsewhere in the house, she assumed that the boyfriend had decided to come to bed and that it was he who was having sex with her.

(Source: News of the Weird)