Sideswipe: Dec 7: Blue pebbles are MIA

False advertising

A reader writes: "Has anyone else noticed that the pebbles packet has blue, green, yellow, orange and red pebbles on the packet but when you open it up there are no blue ones. We were wanting to play a party game and needed five colours but alas pebbles let us down!"

Hair today, gone tomorrow

How to get what you want. "I remember when I was in junior school there was this girl who had never had a haircut, so her hair was ridiculously long (think Rapunzel long) and she always complained abut it but her mum wouldn't let her get it cut. So one day at playtime she put chewing gum in her hair at the exact length she wanted it cut to. She came in the next day with her hair cut and a smug grin on her face and I knew that girl was going places." (Via Christoph-Waltzed)

Autocorrect fail.

Putting the handbrake, and frighteners, on

"Some years ago I worked as a sales rep. Sometimes I had to pick up stock from our large warehouse," writes a reader. "We reps found that if we glided in with engines off, after finding a worker with his back to the door, jamming on the handbrake as we approached would result in such a screech of tyres that he/she would be mightily surprised, to say the least, sometimes causing both feet to leave the ground. This took some practice to refine, judging speed, stopping distance, (obviously the nearer one stopped to the victim the better the effect) and generating the loudest screech took many attempts. We all had plenty of feedback from the workers, hopefully we gave them no lasting effects."

Just over the Auckland Harbour Bridge, heading north on Friday.

War-time bride and her husband

Diane Keith, of Waihi Beach, writes: "The photo (Sideswipe, Friday, December 4) is of my parents. My father, Gordon James Nicholson from Papatoetoe, was born in 1922. He served overseas as a sapper. He married my mother in 1944. My mother, Doris Vera Good, was born 1924 in Bulls then later moved to Warkworth and was in the land army."

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Best sunset I've ever seen.

A reader writes:

"It looks like this real estate agent has been a BIT too keen in trying out his photoshop 'skills' to try and sell this house: A sunset sky has been added to the photos...but the photos have been taken in the middle of the day (no long shadows etc), the same clouds are apparent at completely different photo directions and there is the tell tale white outline around the trees."

Video: This aired in the US last week on the show "Booze Traveler". Not only is it the wrong bird, it's also the wrong gooseberry.

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