Driven to despair

General news - Thursday December 13, 2007

ODDS AND ENDS

Driven to despair

Fifty Christmas shoppers from England taking a coach trip to Lille in France ended up 180km away in a Belgian town with the same name - thanks to the driver making a sat-nav blunder.

"A few of us started to wonder what was going on when we saw signs for Eindhoven, which clearly isn't in France," one passenger told British newspapers.

The mistake meant the furious trippers had to spend an extra four hours on their coach as the red-faced driver headed from the small Belgium town to the French city.

By the time the coach party from Gloucestershire arrived they only had two hours to spend in the shops.

"It was ridiculous," said one passenger. "The coach driver obviously had two Lilles to choose from on his sat-nav and he picked the wrong one. But the driver wouldn't be told, he insisted he knew what he was doing."

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Four days in a toilet

A 55-year-old bachelor was trapped for four days in a freezing bowling club toilet without food or a mobile phone.

David Leggat survived on tap water after a door jammed behind him at the club in Aberdeen, Scotland.

He spent most of the time in the dark, managed no more than three hours' sleep a night, and was so cold that he had to put his feet in a hand basin of hot water in an attempt to stay warm.

Shouting was futile as the lavatory is at the back of the outdoor bowling club, which is rarely visited in winter. There were no windows that would allow him to break out.

He was finally rescued when a cleaner arrived and heard his cries for help.

Legatt said: "I had nothing with me to eat so I sipped cold tap water to keep me going. I was absolutely frozen. All I had on was my jacket and my trousers."

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Right man for the job

Formula One legend Michael Schumacher recently jumped behind the wheel of a German taxi in a desperate attempt to catch a flight.

The seven-time world champion panicked when heavy traffic began to build up when he was with his family on the way to an airport near Coburg and asked permission from the taxi driver to swap seats.

He then managed to steer the Opel minibus through the jam to reach the airport just in time.

Cabbie Tuncer Yilmaz revealed: "He said, 'Let me do it. You don't have a problem with that, do you?' He then did the impossible, passing everything like the professional he is.

"At the end he tipped me 100 euros on top of the 60 euro taxi fare. It was the coolest ride of my life - and the fastest."

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The domino effect

Britain is in the grip of a national domino shortage, according to the Daily Mail.

Sales have more than doubled this year as the game experiences a resurgence partly due to its use in the latest Guinness commercial in Britain and partly due to its popularity among Hollywood stars such as Tom Cruise, Demi Moore and the Beckhams.

Some trendy London clubs have even introduced domino nights, where the game is played in luxurious surroundings accompanied by cocktails.

The game has moved on from the simple pastime of country pubs, where it was played by fellows in cloth caps sipping their pint of bitter and has become a trendy game for teens to play.

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