Many faces hard to read
An Oregon man presented a clay jug to Antiques Roadshow earlier this year. Expert appraisers valued it at US$50,000 ($74,000). They dated it to the late 19th century and said it came from the "Middle Atlantic states headed southward". Imagine the man's disappointment when the jug turned out to be the creation of Betsy Soule, who sculpted it in her high school ceramics class in the 1970s.
Lunch box linguistics
"Is it just me, or is the bane of every working parent's morning filling the children's lunch boxes?" writes Carol from Glen Eden. "Such is my dread, I now refer to them as 'bloody lunch boxes', and on my bad days 'eff-ing lunch boxes'. Not only does it have to be rubbish-free, it has to be whole foods and healthy and pleasing to the fuss pots who'll be eating their contents. One has gone off ham, the other complains of the sammy-sameness and often they come back hardly touched. Grr, what a waste! I've taken to making sushi the night before, but who can really keep that up day in, day out? This morning I was particularly aggrieved at the prospect of filling the four lunch boxes for those who still can't manage to get them out of their bags from the day before. The older kids grudgingly get theirs for refilling, but the 5-year-old is having trouble locating his. In a few minutes he turns up with it and says, as he plonks it on the bench: 'Here's my eff-ing lunch box, mum.' I was duly mortified."
