Sideswipe: Dec 6: Location, location, location

Dodgy bit of nesting in a rural long drop. Photo / Supplied

Tis the season to be jolly sick of reruns

December means it's time to switch off your television as the seasonal repeats crank up ... If the rehashing of ancient comedies on TV One wasn't bad enough, this week TV2 ran a very old episode of Renters - a great show full of cranky property managers and poor people in shoddy housing - in prime time. We know it's old because it ain't in widescreen. "You can tell by the cars, and in the office everyone has an old clunky computer monitor," tweets Caleb. "I thought I was watching Heartland," tweeted Davina. It was made in 2003. Sheesh! What else can we look forward to after the annual replaying of Christmas schlock? Maybe some Gilligan's Island or another round of Friends.

Car towed in error? So who's paying the fee?

A reader says his wife has just phoned Sylvia Park - a little anxious after Vimmi's tale of being towed after three hours yesterday as she had a full day of shopping, dinner and movies planned. "A very helpful customer service lady who has been bombarded with similar calls all day clarified that it is not their policy to tow cars, and the only cars they have towed in the past have been staff vehicles parked in the public area and the most someone could expect would be a parking fine. The process if you want to stay later than the free period is to simply go to customer services with a rego number and a mobile phone number, and you can stay as long as you like." It looks like Vimmi's car was towed in error, so maybe Sylvia Park would like to reimburse the $320 fee and maybe a few grocery vouchers to cover her melted frozen food.

Unisex toilets in busy public places the way to go

Bevan's unease at finding a mother (with her son) in the men's toilets of Auckland Airport is shared by some, but not by others. Sian explains (delicately) why it's better to take kids of any gender into the women's toilets. "A woman does her business in the relative privacy of a cubicle, while a man has it all on display at a urinal. And a child of 2 years old is surely too young to be using an individual urinal, as they're too high up the wall. A child of that age should be taken into the toilet relevant to the parent accompanying him. In this case, the ladies'." Alan writes: "Our youngest daughter was just two when I became the sole caregiver of the girls. I found myself unwelcome in changing facilities, even though my daughter needed cleaning up. Where else should I do that?" Another reader says the solution is easy: "Busy public places like airports need to provide good parents rooms and/or unisex toilets."

Strange Products: Real fruit jewelry. Really.

Website: When Google tries to guess what you're searching for it can be really funny or full of pathos... or just perplexing.

Sounds like...From Metafilter.com: "Any parent of a young child will have experienced the ignominy of reaching a page in a picture-book featuring a giraffe and being ignorant of the appropriate sound with which to impersonate said animal." Here is the sound."

Quick clip: This is a satire on those British "freak show" documentaries. Unfortunately it pre-dates Embarrassing Bodies, which took the genre to a level out of reach by mere parody...

Got a Sideswipe? Send your pictures, links and anecdotes to Ana at ana.samways@nzherald.co.nz