Sideswipe: Oct 1 - Very special cafe

Tea and cofee not to be sniffed at. Photo / Supplied

ANZ horsing around with plastic

A day at the Auckland waterfront on Sunday for the McDonalds began with Journey to the Deep, an interactive show for children about how to care for our marine environment. "All three children were suitably inspired to pick up rubbish from the beach," said Mum. "But then we went to look at the ANZ Winter Wonderland temporary ice rink on Queens Wharf. We were shocked to see that the area surrounding the rink is covered in millions of small pieces of plastic meant to represent snowflakes! I even checked, hoping it was biodegradable paper, but no, definitely plastic. Millions and millions of small fish-bite-sized bits of thin plastic, blowing along the ground and ending up in the sea."

Back to the future in the kitchen

A reader writes: "While driving down the Southern Motorway this morning I noticed a billboard from a local kitchen outfit and suddenly wondered if I was driving a DeLorean and had been transported, via flux capacitor, back to the 1970s ...The billboard reads: "She will love you forever with a new kitchen."

Things could get messy

There could be a global shortage of disposable nappies after an explosion at a Japanese chemical plant that produces a fifth of the global supply of the water-absorbing polymers in popular nappy brands. The company, Nippon Shokubai, has already announced plans to set up production facilities overseas while operation at the factory is suspended.

Stuck at home with a case of the glue

Residents on an Irish housing estate had the doors to their houses glued tight. More than 25 homes in Letterkenny, County Donegal, were targeted and one resident, John McGeever, said he believed industrial-strength glue must have been used by the culprits. "There was another area where I was told there were about 90 houses done. The people responsible probably thought it was funny," he said. "Some people went out of their homes and couldn't get back in again. Then some people realised when they were in they couldn't get out. Locksmiths had to replace most of the locks because they said whatever way this glue was inserted, it actually went into the springs in the doors."

Erudite vandal easy to find

Because the words were not those ordinarily used by vandals keying cars, police in Newcastle arrested University of Newcastle professor Stephen Graham, who had been a prominent critic of neighbourhood parking rules that allowed outsiders to use the few spaces on his street. Scratched into several outsiders' luxury cars were words such as "arbitrary" and "really wrong" and "very silly" (as opposed to the usual crude references to anatomy and promiscuity). (Source: News of the Weird)