Sideswipe: Jan 31: Power pruning

5:29 AM Thursday Jan 31, 2013

Tag game stretches over decades

Ten friends have been locked in a game of tag for 23 years and now instead of chasing other players around the school grounds, they fly across country, sneak into offices, jump out from behind bushes to tag each other. Each year the game is live for the month of February only and the last person tagged is "it" for the year. In the mid-1990s one player, Joe Tombari, a high school teacher then living in California, got a knock on the door from a friend who led him out to his new car. Sean Raftis, who was "it", had flown in from Seattle and was folded in the boot of the Honda Accord and leaped out and tagged Mr Tombari, whose wife was so startled she fell backward off the kerb and tore a ligament in her knee. "I still feel bad about it," says Father Raftis, who is now a priest in Montana. "But I got Joe." (Source: Wall Street Journal)

Sticking point for rego

On Monday Peter parked his car in Eldon St, Takapuna, and was outraged to find a notice that his registration was not "affixed in the prescribed manner". Because the rego was sticking out of the plastic pocket, he thought the ticket was for that. It wasn't. The notice actually said: "Warning - current licence label not affixed in prescribed manner". Auckland Transport says the key word is "current". So to be clear, Peter got a warning that his registration had expired three days earlier.

Bottle or can, the sweet choice

Yesterday's Sideswipe showed two pictures showing Watties tomato sauce in a bottle had 10g more sugar per 100g serving than a refill can. No word yet from Watties on their sugary t-sauce, but one reader theorises that the bottles are produced in Australia and the cans are produced here. So maybe we should all buy a plastic tomato and fill it with the canned stuff?

Lost camera has honeymoon shots

On Sunday morning Helen & Joel took a taxi to the CBD and left their Canon camera behind in the Auckland Co-op taxi. "We have phoned the taxi company and the driver says he does not have it, so if anyone who used an Auckland Co-op taxi (taxi driver Stephen) and has picked up our Canon 350 D with LowePro case, could you please contact us at h.lowe@hotmail.com. The camera is very sentimental to us and will be of little value to anyone and, most importantly, it has our honeymoon photos on there, which we haven't had a chance to transfer to the computer."

Picture this: Most photos you see from Victorian times are contrived portraits. Here's a nice series of more candid shots.

Good read: Hazel Phillips from Idealog Magazine has had enough of the rest of the country hatin' on Aucklanders just for the sake of it..."So if you're going to hate Aucklanders, that's a lot of Kiwis - yes, other New Zealanders - to hate," says Hazel. "That's half the country against the other half. That's a country divided. And at the risk of sounding like a half-baked politician delivering a wet-blanket state-of-the-nation speech, a country divided is not a country that can ultimately succeed." Read the full story here.

Video: A quite brilliant short film called Voice Over.

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