Sideswipe: Feb 05: Two cups, one fan

Shrinking cup not cricket.

"Funny thing happened at the cricket on Wednesday," writes Dave. "Halfway through the match the limit of beers you could buy at one time went from four down to two - normal procedure to stop people getting too rowdy as the game goes on. But this time as well as reducing the limit they also switched out the cups to a significantly smaller size [pictured]. You could say this is also a safety measure but not when they keep charging the same price of $8.50. Nice of them to try to keep people safe, but not so sure they should be ramping up their margins because they think people will be too drunk to notice!"

Re-naming Waitangi Day

"Does anyone else watch delayed TV1 news with subtitles?" asks Ross. "Sometimes they're a show all on their own. Last night when the debate was raging about whether our PM was going or not up to the marae, the text was chirpily announcing this was for White Fang Day."

"My mother-in-law bought a painting at Goodwill. She said it was a pretty sun with a meteor crashing into it."

School of hard knocks

A parent writes: "School uniform, check. Over-priced shoes (only the ones the cool kids have), check. Return school socks because of pre-teen over estimation of foot size, check. Get ugly billowy shirt/short combo altered to fit so kid feels good on first day, check. Chromebook procured, check. Two hours and two lots of stationery purchased, check. Healthy food for school lunches stocked up, check. Haircut, no! School run reconnaissance mission to time how long it'll take to deposit kids at two different schools by 9am (25 minutes each way), check. Feeling overwhelmed and broke (but relieved that the interminable New Zealand school holidays are over), check."

Sucking it up at the long drop

The structure pictured in Sideswipe this week, mistakenly thought to be a gun emplacement, was correctly identified as a pump shed that would suck up water for use in the homeowner's bathroom. "Lucky, lucky them," writes Heather. "When I was a child in the 1940s we had a stinky old long drop, an unsecured door, newspaper squares hanging on a nail and blowflies as big as sparrows. For a wee bairn to be perched on the precarious plank seat of a long drop was scary enough without the thought that a blowfly might knock you into the cavern of death."

The distinctive 80s sense of fashion.

Picture this:

Awkward band

publicity shots

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Got a Sideswipe? Send your pictures, links and anecdotes to Ana at ana.samways@nzherald.co.nz