Sideswipe: Monday 28: Oldest cat on the planet

Flossie. Photo / Supplied

The Guinness World Records have announced a new record-breaker: a feline from London named Flossie, the oldest cat in the world. On November 10, 2022, Flossie was 26 years and 316 days old, making her the feline equivalent of a 120-year-old human. In fact, it puts her on par with Jeanne Calment, a French supercentenarian who lived to 122 years and 164 days and who holds the record of oldest person ever.

Being goaded by the fat-shamers

From mumsnet.com:

Q: I was charged excess for my hand luggage as it was over a certain weight - that’s absolutely fine. The combined total weight of myself and my cabin baggage was approximately 69 kilograms. My friend wasn’t charged because their luggage wasn’t overweight, yet the combined total for them and their luggage was over 90kg. My friend joked about how unfair it was. Surely it would be fairer to use the combined weight of traveller and cabin luggage to determine excess fees due?

A: I’m 49kg and I’ve often thought this, OP [original poster]. I think smaller-sized clothes should be cheaper too, as they use less fabric and less petrol etc. to transport them due to being smaller and lighter.

A: But surely your teeny-tiny clothes weigh less than the voluminous tents of us fatties, so you shouldn’t need as much space in your suitcase? You should get a lower luggage allowance to account for your lower-weight clothing.

A: Why should I subsidise rugby players? It’s another way most women are paying to cover the costs of most men.

A: The admin would cost more than the discounts they can give for taking luggage up to a certain weight - and they only have a certain space for cabin luggage.

A: The trauma of being weighed at the airport would stop me from flying altogether.

The things you find on the marketplace

A snakebed. Photo / Supplied

Nicknames

Mark Williams writes: “At work one day - several decades ago - my supervisor told me that they were hiring another person with the same first and last names as me. He was to be working in the same office, on the same projects, with a desk directly opposite mine, and a shared phone between us.

‘So that there is no confusion since you were here first, we will call you Mark I, and he will be Mark II’.

Very conveniently, our first name was ‘Mark’. What could possibly go wrong? Well, I didn’t have a middle initial, but he was ‘I’… so when the mail came in addressed to ‘Mark I’, it would often come to me. And to further complicate things, I was known to about half the people by my nickname from school. So, many people didn’t even know my real first name was Mark - hence mail to ‘Mark’ would go to him. Even the HR people would attribute leave, pay loadings, qualifications and other things to the wrong one.

After some years of everything being confused, the head of HR, in a rare sensible move for a big bureaucracy, said, ‘Enough! You (ie. me) will hereby be changed in all our records and systems to be known by your nickname, and he (the other) will be Mark without any version number’.”