Thief alert sign stolen
A sign warning drivers that thieves were in the area has been stolen.
The notice had been up for only a few hours, reports the Daily Star.
It had been clamped on the A14 near Cambridge.
Nightmare L-test for teenager
A teenager endured a driving test lasting over three hours because her examiner got lost.
Tina Wilson, 18, was eventually led sobbing from her Nissan Micra, but was given a pass after the test in East London.
The Sun says the accounts clerk was so traumatised she suffered a nosebleed through stress.
She had driven along miles of busy city roads after her out-of-town examiner gave instructions for a wrong turn.
Tina said of her ordeal: “I tried not to panic, but was stressed out. My legs were like jelly. At no point did the examiner say the test was over. As far as I was concerned I was being assessed the whole time.”
She added: “I thought the examiner knew where she was going. But we kept going farther and farther out.”
The drama began half an hour into the supposed 40-minute test in Wanstead, East London.
Her examiner, named only as Erica and from Middlesbrough, was confronted by a road closure. Minutes later they were on the three-lane A12 heading for the City.
Tina turned off and then had to negotiate a maze of suburban streets and roundabouts.
Finally the pair, who didn’t have a mobile phone between them, hired a cab and followed it seven miles back to Wanstead.
The Driving Standards Agency launched an urgent investigation.
Couple move 14 miles but keep same address
A Suffolk couple are moving from 31 Sandpiper Road to 31 Sandpiper Road 14 miles away.
Paul and barbara Prewett’s old rented home and their new house in different towns will have the same address – a three million to one coincidence.
Paul said: “I think it shows that the house was meant to be ours. Fate is a marvellous thing.”
The couple did not know the properties had the same address when they chose their £180, 000 house.
It was not even built and was known only as Plot 36 on a new development. Then the saleswoman asked where they lived and they realised that was the address developers Bellway Homes proposed to use.
Paul 55, and Barbara, 47, have living in their rented three bedroom semi in Ipswich for five months after moving from Bristol when he got a new job as manager of a lorry dealership.
Bellway Homes spokesman Julian Kenyon said: “We have built nearly 100,000 homes in the last 50 years and we have never heard of this happening before.”
Chanel hand grenades anyone?
An irreverent German art shop that has just opened in Berlin is selling Chanel hand grenades and gold ringed tampons.
Sin Berlin’s creator, Michael Kuehn, told 90 designers to “think of things the world has never seen”.
In addition to hand grenades bearing the Chanel logo, the designers came up with a Chanel tampon complete with gold chain.
Other items include designer clothes with sewn-in hangers meant to be put in the wardrobe and admired – not worn.
Body-fetishists can also purchase a device that allows them to scan in their body parts and create handbags in the shape of their own their breasts, bums and stomachs.
Also for sale are ‘anti-violence stuffed toys’ that emit a soothing Lavender scent when pummelled.
Spacey issues warning to theatregoers
Kevin Spacey has attacked audiences who allow their mobile phones to ring during a theatre performance, saying visitors should learn to behave.
As artistic director of London’s Old Vic theatre he now personally issues a warning to his audiences to switch off their phones and not to eat sweets.
He said that people that refused “shouldn’t come” to the theatre.
He said people should respect the code of behaviour expected of theatregoers.
“I don’t think people take those things seriously. That’s why mobile phones go off in the theatre, and that’s why people open candy bars thinking if they open it slowly it will be less annoying than if they open it fast.
“My answer is that I say to each audience ‘Don’t!’. You have to respect the fact there is some degree of behaviour that we expect in the theatre and we’re going to demand it at the Old Vic. It’s a phone-free zone. We don’t want them ringing and we certainly don’t want them ringing and people ignoring them pretending that it’s not theirs.”
Spacey is currently directing the play Cloaca, his first since taking over at the Old Vic and has himself made a point of embarrassing audience members whose phones go off.
“Tell them we’re busy,” he told the owner of a ringing mobile during a London performance of The Iceman Cometh.
Kalashnikov rifle man launches vodka
The creator of the world’s most popular rifle – the kalashnikov – has launched a vodka under the same name.
Lt-General Mikhail Kalashnikov said he was launching the vodka because he wanted to continue “the good name” of his gun.
The new drink is 82% proof, says Sky News Online.
The rifle was created by Lt-General Kalashnikov in WWII after he was shot by German soldiers. It has gone on to become one of the most popular guns because of its reliability and simplicity.
He said: “I’ve always wanted to improve and expand on the good name of my weapon by doing good things. We wanted that vodka to be better than anything made, up until now, in both Russia and England.”
Promoters of the vodka said it is “made from grain harvested in Russia and water drawn from Lake Ladoga north of St Petersburg.”
Man’s Santa Claus appeal fails
A German man has lost his appeal to politicians to have Santa Claus banned.
Karl-Friedrich Lentze from Berlin wrote to the board of petitions of the German parliament to ask that Father Christmas be banned.
The 56-year-old argued that the bearded old man scares children.
But the board of petitions turned down the man’s appeal.
“We will not be part of banning Santa Claus from public life.To the contrary, we look forward to the next Christmas holiday,” Bild quotes board members saying.
The members of the board also said they were generally opposed to interfering with fairy tales and fantasies.
“To prevent similar requests in the future, please note that we also don’t plan to ban witches from story books, or to lift the ban on doing magic while not at school.”
Canadian man phones family during funeral
A Canadian man phoned his family as they prepared to bury him after they thought he’d been killed by a train.
Gilbert Squires of St. Philip’s, Newfoundland, said he got a call telling him his brother Dane had been killed by a commuter train in Toronto.
Police said a sister had identified the 48-year-old retired welder as the man killed while crossing a rail line in the city.
“The body was badly mutilated,” said Gilbert. “We’ve been mourning in Newfoundland and in Toronto, everywhere. We’re in total shock.”
But during the funeral, Dane Squires called the funeral home after hearing about his own death from a sister.
Gilbert said Dane spoke to his daughter Trina. “This was Dane on the phone, so she actually thought that she was dead or talking to a ghost or something and just about lost her mind,” said Gilbert.
A police spokesman said Squires’ sister had viewed the victim’s body and identified it as that of her brother, reports Canada’s Broadcasting Corporation.
“There must have been a likeness,” said DC Dave Stirling said. “It certainly is an unfortunate circumstance. It’s certainly a shock.”
Bad milkshake leads to bombing
A bad milkshake at a Florida McDonald’s restaurant led three men to set off an improvised bomb in revenge.
Pedro Garza, and brothers Joshua and Nathaniel, all face felony charges of making and discharging a destructive device.
Sheriffs said the men let off an improvised “acid bomb” inside a North Lakeland McDonald’s because they got a bad milkshake a few days before.
Joshua and Nathaniel Hackey, are both members of the US military, says The Ledger.
Investigators say the men mixed toilet bowl cleaner and aluminum foil in a plastic drinks bottle. The men then capped the bottle and left the restaurant, with the concoction still sitting on the table. It exploded some time later.
When the device went off, most of its contents splattered against a wall and not across the aisle where a customer was sitting.
Nobody was injured and there was no damage to the restaurant.
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