Sideswipe: August 22: Lost Bacon

Someone failed to bring home the bacon.

Embarrassing injuries

1. As a teenager, I was sitting on the bonnet of a friend's old Humber which had a prominent bonnet emblem - a Flying Lady. He started to move forward, I yelled for him to stop which he did abruptly. I slipped forward and was impaled on the Flying Lady.

2. While trying to unknot the vacuum cord the plug end swung up and hit me hard on the bridge of the nose: result a lot of eye-watering pain, one nose gash and two black eyes!

3. I accidentally performed surgery on my neck, writes Maureen. A hairy mole looks pretty grim in the front and middle of a middle-aged woman, so one day I reached for my husband's safety razor to trim the hairs off my mole. I accidentally removed the mole, hair and all. Of course it bled like a stuck pig, but eventually healed. My doctor was both horrified and amused.

Strange names

1. I had a music teacher in the UK called Mrs Lamb and her son was called Shaun.

2. I once played in a football team with a Simon and a Garth. Sometimes Garth's uncle would come and watch. One of the other players wittily observed, "Look, there's Simon and Garth's uncle!".

3. In 1905 my grandmother had a friend "Henrietta", who was being wooed by a young chap called Jimmy Fish. She broke off the relationship however as she did not want to be known as Henrietta Fish.

4. There is a letterbox in rural Whakatane with the name C.S. Pool on it.

5. There were two police officers in the Whakatane - one was Sgt Catchin, the other Constable Killen.

6. I used to teach a girl named Maisie Grace.

7. My best friend Iona married Peter Carr (Iona Carr) and her sister-in-law Lisa (Lisa Carr) and yes, father-in-law, Ivor Carr.

8. At school a girl's called Maida Plank.

Arnie not amused

Kiwi film director Geoff Murphy (Goodbye Pork Pie) almost directed the original Predator and then didn't for "hilarious dad joke-related reasons", tweets film guy Dominic Corry. According to Empire magazine, when Arnold Schwarzenegger got involved it all came to a screaming halt, and all because of the movie Conan the Barbarian. Geoff had previously interviewed as a possible director for the next Conan movie, but with his New Zealand wit he referred to Arnie as "Conan the Librarian". Arnie wasn't amused so Murphy was booted off the project.