Sideswipe

Prime Minister Helen Clark and Sir Barry Curtis. Picture / Sarah Ivey

How's the weather with you? For Manukau Mayor Sir Barry Curtis, every day is a sunny day. At last week's opening of the gleaming new Manukau road-rail interchange, he welcomed the guests and PM under a canopy set up against the pouring rain. "A very good afternoon to you all under the Manukau sun which will appear in due course," boomed the mayor. Sunny disposition.

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Toe the line: Absolutely the last word on the origin of the saying "toe the line", which came from athletes having to put their toes to the starting line. How do we know? Because, says the redoubtable Peter Calder, "people who have spent their lives studying such things discovered it for us by the perusal of old texts, subjected their finding to peers for review and, when it was not disproved, published it". Everything else is shameful supposition.

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Toe the line 2: Absolutely the last ever word on "toe the line". We asked how this came to emerge at a Punctuation Festival. Susan Carter responded: "Our PunFests are indeed a comma sutra riot. The Student Learning Centre at the University of Auckland celebrates punctuation biannually, once with 'The Enormous Mid-Winter Festival' in July and 'The Even Bigger Pre-Christmas' in November. The festivals are what Chaucer calls 'earnest game': we have fun with punctuation to the purpose of anchoring the rules and understanding their implications in those grey areas of prose."

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Hip nats: That nice Ali Ikram from the telly was on TV One's Breakfast on Friday talking to Fran Mold about the week in politics. They were discussing the Nats checking out bands such as The Feelers and Steriogram and wanting to be cool. Ikram, quick as a tax break, noted: "I've already started calling Judy Collins J Co."

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Yuck: The Herald had an overwhelming response last week from people writing in after a mother was told not to change her child by a public swimming pool. An official, statistically weighted poll found that 92.3 per cent of all respondents called it "PC gone mad". Then there was this response ... "I don't mind babies being breast-fed, or even toddlers being changed poolside. What I am disturbed about is babies having nappies changed on tables that people eat from. Case in point being a popular cafe in ... [The exact site has been withheld to cause maximum squeamishness]".

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Hamilton home: Remember Paula Hamilton, the model who turned up in New Zealand a few years back? Here's what she's doing now, according to Popbitch.com: "Britain's Next Top Model starts next Monday and it's awesome thanks to ... fantastically loony 80s model Paula Hamilton as a judge. Hamilton was the star of that Volkswagen Gold ad in the 80s, in which she threw away wedding ring, mink coat, house keys, and jewellery, keeping only her car keys. She's been in rehab 11 times for cocaine and/or alcohol "issues". Had an affair with former Tory Treasurer Lord Ashcroft which ended when he sent her to rehab and she publicly claimed he was impotent. Was engaged to posh Army officer Sebastian Rhodes Stampa for two days until he left her. She then tried to hang herself from a chandelier but it broke. Has a special modelling pose called Dolphin Pole. Refers to herself only in the third person, as Polly."

Oh, and spent time in New Zealand for rehab.