Sideswipe

Lip balm from Thailand.

Armless Tauranga driver Colin Raymond Smith got off a dangerous-driving charge after satisfying police he could steer well with his left foot, but a Florida man wasn't so lucky. Michael Wiley, an enthusiastic driver despite having lost both arms and half a leg in a childhood accident, lost his licence long ago and has reckless driving charges as long as your ... well, you get the idea. His most recent charges weren't driving-related. They involved a domestic assault, in which he used his head.

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A reader says a workmate phoned Births, Deaths and Marriages to get a birth certificate for her brother. The clerk took all the details over the phone and sent it without asking for any identification. When it arrived the name was spelt incorrectly, and the bureaucrats were duly notified. When the replacement certificate arrived, the name was incorrectly spelt again. "It's a good thing she is honest and sent back the wrong certificates. Just think what mischief could be had with two false birth certificates. A couple of welfare benefits, a pair of drivers' licences, and then there's the passports ... "

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An unusual thing to deny: Aides to Prince Charles have denied a report that the heir to the throne's staff have to cook seven boiled eggs to allow him to choose one with the perfect consistency. BBC Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman's new book On Royalty, mentions that Charles enjoys a boiled egg after a day's hunting but he is fussy about how long it is cooked. "If the Prince felt that number five was too runny, he could knock the top off number six or seven," says Paxman. (Source: Reuters)

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Having seen The Shawshank Redemption and the efforts that Tim Robbins' character went through to get a decent in-house library up and running, Tumeke! blogger Tim Selwyn, in lock-up himself for sedition, is appealing to those with unwanted or surplus books and magazines to send them in to broaden and enlighten the twisted and criminal minds of the prisoners in his unit. He describes what's on offer in the current library: "Wilbur Smith's epic chronicles of super-macho Victorian elephant slaughtering seem to be the backbone of a bleak expanse of Reader's Digest condensed novels and 80s paperback fiction. Half of the Stephen Kings have had the last couple of pages torn out of them as well as parts of the covers cut into to provide rigid ends to rolly cigarettes, or other cigarettes. There's one cookbook from 1982 with photos of burnt dishes and other inedible fare that makes our dry mash dinners actually look appealing." Please send your books and magazines to: Tim Selwyn, Librarian/Unit 8, Hawkes Bay Prison, Private Bag 1600, Napier.