Sideswipe
Pain for trains mainly down the drain
The rail company Virgin Trains is appealing to passengers to behave responsibly after a bra was flushed down a toilet, causing a blockage. The operator says that four toilets are taken out of service every day as a result of people using them incorrectly. It estimates that 18,000 lost toilet hours every year left it with a repair bill of more than $340,000. The bra is not the only strange item to be found down the toilet on the operator’s Pendolino trains — with glasses, wedding rings, nappies and a football scarf also causing plumbing problems, Sky News reported. More than 90 per cent of the blockages were caused by wet wipes — and even those labelled as being flushable were clogging pipes. Michael Jacks, head of fleet and engineering at Virgin Trains, said: “It did make us smile when we found the bra as it’s not something you would expect to find. But it does highlight a very serious issue, and one that greatly impacts on our customers.
“Bins are provided, and we would remind everyone to follow the three Ps of flushing. Only pee, poo and paper should be flushed down any toilet.”
The criss-cross country runner
“I used to get lost all the time during school cross country,” writes a reader. “Our PE teacher would tell us the route, talking about turning on so-and-so street and the such for our route for the morning. If I got separated from the pack (which was . . . often . . . I sucked), I didn’t know where I was supposed to go. Usually I would just backtrack. Sometimes this led to me ultimately running a longer distance and almost being late for class. My parents, frustrated, tried to figure out how I was consistently getting lost. Somehow, I just assumed that people had memorised what the streets were called. I was such an oblivious kid that I didn’t realise the green signs were the street names that I was supposed to be paying attention to.”