I’m afraid this news article was too good to miss:
“A bungled Mother’s Day event where children were given erotic chocolates has exposed a bitter rift among parents at Woodberry Public School.
The Newcastle Herald reported on Saturday that several parents were horrified that bags containing chocolate penises and breasts were handed to children to give to their mums.
Others have since leapt to the defence of the school’s Parents and Citizens committee.”
Another parent, identifying herself as ”Jen” on the Herald website, said the chocolates were inappropriate but defended the committee and the school’s principal. Â ”The kids see worse on television on a daily basis,” she said.
I’m not so sure about that last opinion. Anyway, read the rest of the story: here
In my retirement, I have become more and more accustomed to getting up late. So it came as a bit of a struggle to leap out of bed at the first sound of the alarm clock radio at 5:57 a.m. on Sunday.
Cup of tea and a banana, ablutions, dressed and out the door by 6:40. Mark arrived moments after I’d got the GTO onto the drive and warming up. The forecast was dull and drizzly at home, cold but sunny on the South Coast. Just goes to show they don’t always get it right.
We had both wrapped up warm but, as it turned out, not warm or dry enough.
The drive down was uneventful, though we did see a smattering of other cars clearly also heading for Goodwood on the way.
There was the usual queue at the roundabouts to get in, though it did seem a bit worse than normal.
Once parked up we made a beeline to the nearest hot drink source, then started wandering and photographing.
The weather, meanwhile, was not getting any warmer – just wetter and windier. Our initial plan for a quick breakfast buttie on the move soon became a desire to sit somewhere warm to eat so we made for the cafe.
It was busy when we arrived and absolutely heaving by the time we finished. I’d never seen such a long queue.
Back outside, cars were still arriving and the Marshalls – bless their cotton socks – were struggling to find parking spaces, even for real Supercars. It turned out the event had been heavily publicised but the field normally used as a general car park was far too wet (and also full of sheep).
So we left a little earlier than normal, around 10:15. It took 20 minutes of queuing just to get out. Not only were cars still arriving, they were queued and dumped on the verges for a good mile North of the site – and probably in other directions, too. Surprise – it had been dry and bright all morning back home !
These photos and a few more are on my Flickr page. Other PistonHead members have posted hundreds more on the forum.
Not something you read every day and, I suspect, not something BMW have been sued for before:
“Henry Wolf claims his 1993 BMW motorcycle, or more specifically the bike’s “ridge-like” seat, gave him a “severe case of priapism” when he took it for a four-hour ride on May 1, 2010, according to the Courthouse News Service.
Wolf is suing BMW North America and the seat’s manufacturer, Corbin-Pacific, in a product liability lawsuit in the California Superior Court in San Francisco, claiming the “negligent design, manufacture and/or installation of the seat” has caused the painful condition.”
Here are a few examples from the relevant, and very large, section on the PistonHeads forum.
Remember, fellow drivers, these people are (probably) fully licensed to drive on the road. Any one of them could cross your path on your very next journey.
Since they obviously can’t park a car, what do you expect their driving skills to be like?
Be very careful!
A hungry bear, emerging from hibernation, can be dangerous. This one didn’t attack anyone but, having climbed a tree on a University campus, had to be tranquilised and beautifully caught as it fell.
Read the full story: here, with more photos and a video clip, too.
A few weeks ago I ordered a tonne of fine top soil for my lawn areas. Rather than have my driveway blocked with a large bag that would take me days to clear by shovelling it into a barrow and wheeling it round the back and putting it into a pile where it would get wet, I ordered a pallet of 40 x 25kg bags. So far so good, though the delivery charge incorporated into the overall price was, understandably, quite high.
It all went wrong when the lorry driver got the pallet onto the tailgate with his little forklift truck. It was on two pallets, the tailgate sagged under the weight, the pile of bags tilted, the plastic sheet holding it onto the pallets gave way and a third of them slid off and fell from nearly 2m up onto my tarmac drive. One split open, several had small holes. He had to shift them individually and I was left to brush up and hose off the mess. There were more damaged bags at the bottom of the pile, too.
I amended the delivery slip before signing it and took photos of the mess, which I sent to the firm by email, with a polite complaint, expecting an apology if nothing else.
Imagine my surprise when I got a personal email of apology and a promise of compensation to the tune of the cost of those 13 damaged bags. That refund swiftly found its way to my account so I am pleased to be able to recommend GravelMaster for their products and customer service.
It’s the 7″ VGA Cloudnine Neuropad2. 1.5MHz, 8GB, Android 4.0.3 for about £130, including case/keyboard and SD card.
I’ve been using PCs for 30 years. I’ve found a laptop is needed these days when I’m travelling but they’re heavy. The popular tablets are too expensive to justify for occasional use.
But this thing is amazing: browsing (not in mobile format) and email (of course), Office apps (MS compatible to some degree), BBC iPlayer, eBook and Acrobat readers, camera, Google maps with street view, Skype and anything else I want from the Google store. Voice input has been error-free to date.
Today I watched a video and viewed some photos from Facebook on our wall-mounted TV, via an HDMI lead.
I haven’t been this enthusiastic about anything since I bought my GTO!
It’s a bit of a learning curve, particularly as the manufacturer’s instruction manual is so poor, but the retailer is working on a better version. Learning the swipes and touch techniques has been new to me as I don’t own a smart phone.
A cute furry animal and a happy ending: what more could I want for a story line?
Kate Meech, of Bugbrooke, near Northampton, returned home from a day out to find the beloved family pet, named Smurf, suspended in mid air.
After initial confusion, Mrs Meech spotted the outline of a circular object protruding from the pet’s cheek.
She realised the pet had eaten a magnet and become attached to the metal bars of its cage.
The hamster had stashed the magnet inside its cheek and after a few days managed to push it out. Mrs Meech said: “We took it to the vet’s just for a bit of an explanation. The vet said she had never seen anything like it. Smurf seems to be OK now.”
“There was just a tiny mark on her cheek where the magnet had come out. She’s now back to her normal loopy self.”
For all of us, saddened at the news over recent years of Zion Wildlife Gardens closing down after its famous Craig “The Lion Man” Busch was sacked and fears over what would happen to the Park, the animals and Craig, fear no more. Rejoice instead.
He’s back and raring to get back into doing what he loves most and does so well.
You lucky people North of Auckland can expect to be able to go and visit him and his lions and other big cats soon. The rest of us can at least await the next TV series.
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