Sideswipe

A nostalgic sign spotted at the Portugal vs Mexico World Cup game.

Busted: A reader wonders if Stagecoach would like to explain why the driver of the 863 bus from the North Shore to Auckland City mid-morning yesterday stopped in Takapuna, left the bus without explanation (locking all the passengers inside) and sat at the bus stop for five minutes to have a smoke and read the newspaper before rejoining his mystified passengers and resuming the journey.

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A few weeks ago in Warkworth a reader spotted a uniformed officer at the wheel of a police car, driving along the main drag towards the "intersection from hell" and turning on to State Highway 1, all the time eating from a bowl of food in his lap with a fork. The officer looked embarrassed when he realised the truck driver could see down into his vehicle.

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Judith McDonald of Westmere was in the audience of TV One's new interview show About Now with Mark Sainsbury. Sir Edmund Hillary was a guest, with Neil Finn. She writes: "I couldn't resist the temptation to get Sir Ed's signature on a $5 note and, sure enough, he obliged." Also in the audience was Sir Ed's grandson, who told Judith how when he was younger, he went to the dairy and got a $5 bill as change with his granddad's picture on it and an autograph. "Given the number of $5 notes in circulation," says Judith, "the statistical chances of that must mean either it was a dead set fluke or that Sir Ed has autographed a heck of a lot of notes!"

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Members of the Pakuranga Country Club's working bee have come to the rescue of our Pakuranga lady whose pile of wood was pilfered, offering to replenish her supply. Many thanks to Don Dawson and co. Sideswipe also received kind offers of help from wood-splitter Mark Baker, Moira Henry, Grant Goodmon, Tom Blythen and Ian Murray (who offered to zip-zap a new stash) and Liza in London, who wrote: "Have you got a rough idea how much it would cost to replace the elderly lady's wood pile? I'm sitting in my office in London and have just read the story to my colleagues, and we would like to have a whip-around for her and try and replace the wood."

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Now that's irony: The Washington Post reports that after holding an outdoor press conference to decry the then-recent bump in gasoline prices, Capitol Hill legislators returned to offices only a few blocks away in the comfort of a gas-guzzling SUV. In fact, several senators hopped into idling SUVs to reach their offices across the street. (Source: News of the Weird)