My e-mail inbox contains thousands of accounts of deals gone horribly wrong: builders absconding from incomplete home-improvement jobs; new cars that spend more time in the dealer’s workshop than the owner’s garage; things that go in for repair and emerge in a worse state - and a whole lot more.
It’s hardly light reading, and nor should it be. Most of the writers of those e-mails are pretty desperate by the time they seek my help.
But I have to say I’m hugely grateful to those who lighten my load by providing a little amusement - especially when it’s unintended.
Take the woman who wrote to me recently about a lounge suite she and her husband bought, which is allegedly proving to be defective in a number of ways. This is having quite a few negative effects, most notably on the husband’s nether regions, apparently.
“After a month of utilising the lounge suite, the three-seater’s cushions have started to collapse. It is uncomfortable to sit on, as you slide forwards.
“When my husband sits on it his pants slide up, which is hurting him privately.”
And then there’s the woman who implored me to intervene because she’s been trying to tell the SABC and its debt collectors to stop “hounding” her granny for payment of her TV licence, because the old lady died in 2006, just three months after she’d paid her latest TV licence fee.
Her granddaughter wrote: “The SABC has been badgering our address with final notices, court dates etcetera. I just find it absurd that a dead woman should pay her annual TV licence if she is too dead to watch TV.
“The more we send letters proving her death, the more they want to know where to find her.”
When the payment notice, addressed to the granny, arrived at the family home last April, they posted her death certificate to the address listed on the SABC TV licence website - Private Bag X60.

iol.co.za

This article appeared in the Guardian on Thursday March 13 2008 on p21 of the International section. It was last updated at 09:08 on March 13 2008.
A dolphin guided two distressed whales to safety after they appeared to be headed for death on a beach in New Zealand, witnesses said yesterday. Despite the efforts of rescuers, the two pygmy sperm whales, a mother and her calf, repeatedly stranded themselves on Mahia beach, 300 miles north-east of Wellington, until the bottlenose dolphin - named Moko by residents - intervened. “Moko came flying through the water and pushed in between us and the whales,” a rescuer, Juanita Symes, said. “She got them to head toward the hill, where the channel [to the sea] is.”
Associated Press in Wellington
A woman was stopped at Munich airport after baggage handlers found the skeleton of her brother in her luggage, police said yesterday. The 62-year-old woman was travelling to Italy from Brazil on Tuesday when a scan showed a human skull and other bones sealed in a plastic bag. The woman explained that she was trying to fulfil the last wish of her brother - who died 11 years ago in Sao Paulo, Brazil - to be buried in Italy. After producing the appropriate papers from Brazilian authorities for the unusual transport the woman was allowed to carry on to Naples - bones and all.

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THERE are two Beth Morgans. The first is the woman portrayed in the media, the femme fatale who slept with powerful property developers and became the centre of an extraordinary corruption hearing into Wollongong City Council.
The second is the one I’ve been sitting next to for the past two weeks.
The first is the woman in the sunglasses, her shield against the world. For the media, the sunglasses help preserve the mystery. For Morgan, they give her a faint hope that people will not recognise her. The second is the woman in clear prescription glasses, fighting to salvage what she can of her reputation and future livelihood, carefully studying transcripts of evidence.
For the past fortnight Morgan, 32, has been the most talked about woman in Australia. Each day, as she left the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption in Sydney, media chased the former Wollongong town planner down the street.
Armed only with her sunglasses, she stared straight ahead. It was as if she were following Winston Churchill’s famous saying: if you’re going through hell, just keep going.
Inside the ICAC, she sat in the same seat every day, checking transcripts and taking notes of new evidence.
For 10 days we got into a pattern: we both sat in the back row, leaving a vacant seat in the middle. In the early days she cut a solitary figure. At lunch she was alone, flicking through a magazine.

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