A parking attendant sprang into action when a man collapsed outside Altrincham General Hospital, Cheshire - not to help the man, but to ticket his car. After the man, who is diabetic, had keeled over in a car outside the hospital entrance, nurses ran out to help and called an ambulance. Undeterred by the frantic activity going on around her, the parking attendant repeatedly tried to issue a ticket because the driver had pulled into an ambulance bay. She ignored protests and explanations as she pressed on - and even continued to issue a ticket after the ambulance arrived and the paramedics took over the care of the patient. (Source: ThisIsCheshire.co.uk)

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Barbara Templeton writes: "It was my daughter Kim's birthday on Saturday and she received a fax from her mother-in-law in Taranaki saying, 'Happy wedding anniversary to you both!' Puzzled, she queried her husband, who replied: "Oh, it was also the anniversary of my first marriage and Mum has forgotten to update her book!"

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Jodie of Grafton writes: "While I'm pleased to see that Noel Leeming are trying to show their multiculturalism by saying Merry Christmas in various languages, someone ought to tell their advertising people to go back to school and learn English first! I am so tired of seeing basic errors in advertisements.

They can't even claim it is to save space, as having the correct information would have taken exactly the same amount of letters!"

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The man noted in News of the Weird in 1996 for keeping an unbelievably detailed personal diary died in October, aged 89. For 25 years, the Rev Robert Shields of Washington had chronicled his life in five-minute segments of banalities, leaving 37 million words on paper filling 91 boxes. His self-described "uninhibited, spontaneous" work was astonishing in its mundaneness. Examples: August 13, 1995, "8.45am: I shaved twice with the Gillette Sensor blade [and] shaved my neck behind both ears, and crossways of my cheeks, too." July 25, 1993, 7am: "I cleaned out the tub and scraped my feet with my fingernails to remove layers of dead skin." 7.05am: "Passed a large, firm stool, and a pint of urine. Used five sheets of paper."