Tattoo with a message

General News - Wednesday December 19, 2007

ODDS AND ENDS

Tattoo with a message

A teenage English girl who had her lover's nickname tattooed onto her stomach in Chinese symbols found out months after they split up that it actually said "supermarket".

Joanne Raine, 19, from Darlington, discovered the mistake after she walked into a Chinese takeaway to find out what the tattoo symbols really meant, six months after she started going out with Andrew Blenche.

According to the Northern Echo, she had wanted to have a tattoo of Roo, Andrew's nickname. She went to Skindeep Tattoo Parlour in Darlington, and chose a capital r, capital o and small o from the wall and paid 80 (nearly 5,000 baht) . However what she had picked out in Chinese symbols was the less than romantic "supermarket."

-

Prince likes his mushy peas

Britain's Prince William surprised a fancy restaurant recently by asking for mushy peas with his fish and chips.

The restaurant did not stock such a working-class dish, so staff had to dash outside to a supermarket to buy some as the prince, 25, sat down to a 480 (about 30,000 baht) meal with his stepmother Camilla Parker Bowles and four of her family.

A source at Scotts restaurant in London's Mayfair district told the Sun: "He asked for mushy peas as a side order. A waiter was sent out to pick up a few tins from the nearest supermarket." According to restaurant staff the Prince ate the lot.

-

Who ate all the pies?

Last weekend's important world pie eating championships in Wigan faced an unexpected dilemma after one of the organiser's dogs woofed the lot the evening before the big event.

Dave Williams's pet Charlie ate at least 10 pies that had been made for the event, according to the Daily Mirror.

Williams, 57, who won the event in 1995, was looking after the tournament pies at his Preston home for safe-keeping.

He said: "Charlie likes pies, being a Wigan dog, so he probably thought they were for him. I only turned my back for 10 minutes and they'd gone. I was horrified."

The dog apparently sniffed out the pies when his owner accidentally left the refrigerator door open.

However, the local piemaster came to the rescue and worked through the night to replace the pies that Charlie took such a fancy to.

-

Tossers to use fake fish

The annual tuna tossing festival in Port Lincoln, South Australia has undergone a minor change - for the first time it will involve fake fish.

The whole frozen tuna that are normally tossed by burly local fishermen will be replaced with polyurethane replicas for next month's Tunarama Festival.

"What happens when the tuna is tossed, even though it's frozen solid, it does start to break down," said Merriwyne Hore, manager of the 2008 festival.

"The tail comes off, the fins come off, the eyes fall out and then the underbelly breaks, and, you know, it really gets to be extremely messy."

A local artist has sculpted the fake fish to look just like the real thing.

Bangkok Post