A Little Light Weirdness – 7

It’s an election year in the UK, and politicians there are suddenly more image conscious than ever. None more so than incumbent Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who - at his wife’s suggestion - has swapped his regular Kit-Kat munching habit for a diet of bananas in an effort to slim down a bit. While it’s nice to know that the British PM’s wife is perhaps a reader this blog, she’s obviously not a regular one, or she’d have known that portly politicos are more trusted. Now if only he’d show the common touch by going on a bacon binge (Orange News).

Mind you, Mr. Brown is not the only statesman trying to avert a bleak future this week, an unnamed Arab ambassador got the shock of his life when he finally lifted his new bride’s niqab, only to find she had cross-eyes and a beard. The groom immediately went to court to have the marriage annulled, claiming he had been tricked into the marriage and that the bride’s parents had used pictures of her attractive older sister to deceive him. The court found for the groom and dissolved the marriage, but turned down his demand for $150000 compensation (Daily Mail).

But perhaps he’s been a bit quick to judge by appearances. Two Chinese men certainly were when the found a hoard of 20 clay artefacts in an old tomb they discovered in a field near their home, only to later sell the whole lot to a collector for less than $2000. Unfortunately for the pair, theirs were rare finds from the Sui-Tang Dynasty, making the collection over 1000 years old. One item alone, a pottery figurine, recently reached $150,000 at auction (Daily Times).

More fortunate was Wendy Jones of Aberglasney in Wales, who took the old plate she’d had perched on her sideboard for years – except on those odd occasions it had fallen off it - to a TV antiques show, in a plastic carrier bag, only to be told it was part of a rare, Prussian royal service worth over £100000 (Telegraph).

Hot on the heels of banning mamas in pyjamas, British grocery chain Tesco has decided that fathers carrying their children have to go too. Martin Dunkley was shopping in a Cambridge branch of the store with his 6 year-old daughter riding on his shoulders, when he was approached by security and told that this constituted a risk to customer safety and he must put her down. When he refused, Mr. Dunkley was banned from the store and escorted out (The Sun).

Faced with this level of idiocy, the UK’s public servants are having to raise their game to stay ahead of the field. For example Leeds Council, who have just hired a ‘core skills trainer’, to teach the staff how to not use so much jargon (Telegraph). And the Greater Manchester Police, who spent £100000 on storytelling sessions for 200 of its top officers (This Is Lancashire).

And where there are cops, there are bound to be robbers. This week’s weird and wanted award must go to the one-armed man who raided a jewellers in Leigh-on-Sea in England, and stole a single cufflink worth over $180 (UPI). Not far behind is the gang of unknown assailants who tied up a delivery driver in Kettering in England and stole his lorry load of Lego. Police hope recovering some of the missing items will help them build a case (STV).

Not so much weird as just plain dumb, a special mention must go out to the gang of Somali pirates who attempted to hijack a French warship by mistake. Instead of the helpless cargo vessel they were anticipating, they found themselves rapidly closing on a heavily armed destroyer full of commandos who were in the area on an anti-piracy mission. Their first clue was probably the warning shots from the helicopter launched to intercept them, that and the two boatloads of marines sent to chase them down (NewsLite).

And when it’s not people taking your transport off you it’s the reverse. A British pub in West Didsbury is in a quandary after an unknown patron left his tank in their carpark but hasn’t returned for it. The man, whose identity is not known, asked if would be okay to leave it there before Christmas, and hasn’t been in since, leaving landlord Martin Devlin to make the best of it. “We often get people coming to have their picture taken next to it," explained his wife (Digital Spy).

Finally, opera is not everyone’s cup of tea, but a new staging of Alban Berg’s Lulu in Geneva has been enthusiastically received, not least for its nudity, simulated on-stage sex and back-projected pornography. True, the opera’s tale of a young dancer’s steamy affairs with several men and women before her eventual death at the hands of Jack the Ripper was never going to be a family night out, but French director Olivier Py’s production is possibly the raciest performance ever in the normally demure Swiss township (Reuters).

(Image: Chris Sharp / FreeDigitalPhotos.net)