Sideswipe: Sept 16: Create your own sign

Someone has created a Wellywood-type sign on one of the hills as you enter Onerahi. Photo / Supplied

Everybody's doing it ... In Whangarei, someone has created a Wellywood-type sign on one of the hills as you enter Onerahi. "It makes a change from just a barren hillside of gorse," says our reader.

Tell-tale phone number

A 47-year-old called police to say there was an armed man walking along the street and gave a description of himself as the suspect. Unemployed Bromley man Adam McLeish pleaded guilty to wasting police time and was sentenced to be electronically tagged for three months. Police had searched his home for weapons and noticed that the landline number was the same as the informant's.

Divorce the easy way

Divorce Hotel is a service available to splitting couples in the Netherlands, in which they can go to a hotel for three days to work out an agreement. Couples thinking about going through the cost-effective Divorce Hotel process have to decide if they can settle their differences quickly, with a mediator instead of lawyers, then they choose a four- or five-star hotel. Over three days, the mediator and other specialists - notaries, even psychologists - are on hand to help the couple. (Source: Fortean Times)

Careful what you say

More "I said/thought it and it happened" stories: 1) "I was sitting in the car with my Catholic girlfriend at an intersection when a man ran past carrying a paper bag. My girlfriend asked out loud: "I wonder what's in his bag?" Instantly the bag split and a dozen oranges went rolling everywhere. She simply made the sign of the cross and we drove off. We're now married." 2) "When my children were young we played games on long trips. In one game, my 4-year-old son said, 'The next person to see a pink tractor gets 10 points'. We explained that tractors didn't come in pink. What did we see a few minutes later? A pink tractor in the middle of a paddock!" 3) "I was at a party and talking about broken bones. I put my hand on a tree and said, 'I've never broken a bone, touch wood'. The next day I broke both bones in my ankle at a football tournament. At the hospital, the bones were set on the wrong angle and two years later my ankle was re-broken and pinned. I no longer say 'touch wood'."

A pedant writes

Tony admits he's a pedant: "Great story by the 8-year-old, but someone should tell his headmaster that not only should Middlemore be spelt with a capital letter, but so should Hospital, since the word is part of the institution's name. Also, the headmaster's sentence should either have a semicolon in place of the comma, or use a conjunction [such as but] after the comma. Sadly, the inability to distinguish between the appropriate uses of the comma and the semicolon is increasingly common ..."