KEY POINTS:
A warm welcome awaits at Rangitaiki Lodge on the Napier-Taupo road - not, says Rebecca Hughes. "Even once we had accepted the rules in the poster, purchased food and summoned up the courage to ask for the toilet key (safely held in the manageress' pocket), we were quizzed
like children on what we had to eat. We heard another customer ask for the key and in a loud voice designed to be a warning to us all, the pointed reply came, "Yes, as you've dined in". The walls of the heavily guarded bathrooms are adorned with more copies of the posters, complete with letters from the council also stuck on the wall, with appropriate clauses highlighted, as proof that the lodge really doesn't have to provide toilets. My advice to travellers, if you don't like appalling customer service and don't want to be made to feel you're in the wrong for needing to use a loo, hang on till Taupo."
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Niall Dow writes: "My wife was mooching about in the surf shop in Matakana on a hot and busy day when she overheard a couple discussing the bright blue Crocs the husband was trying on. 'They look terrible,' she said. 'No, I like them,' he said. So he spun around to my wife and asked for her opinion. She proceeded to name all the places she wore hers at and said how versatile they were. He thanked my wife and decided they would go very well with the Auckland Blues jersey he was wearing and, yes, he was buying them."
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And the emails keep coming: More readers share their pet peeves about misused, overused and generally disliked words/phrases:
* Paul Harper is sick of hearing "politically correct". "It is the popular catchphrase of the lazy and the ignorant, a blanket term used to stifle debate. In the not-too-distant future I imagine that being 'PC' will be considered politically incorrect, and political incorrectness will become the new politically correct. And in election year, I guess I am going to hear a lot of it."
* Matthew Gordon's biggest dislike is the use of the term "sleeps" when referring to the number of days to go. "If you are talking to someone over the age of 5, don't use it," he says.
* Dirk du Plooy dislikes sports broadcasters' brutal adjectives. "It doesn't matter what the activity - from tiddlywinks through rugby to chess and ballroom dancing, the losers are always 'thrashed', 'thumped', 'pulverised', 'annihilated', 'destroyed', 'bludgeoned', 'taken out', 'demolished'. No one 'wins' or 'loses' any more."
* Alan Portman would like to see the phrase "yae high or yae long" go.
* Mike Blake reckons "obviously" is used to death.
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Many readers pointed out that the correct phrase printed in Sideswipe is "without further ado", not "adieu". So it is.