DAVID ADAMS writes about the odder side of life…
Not one of the French competitors but it’s a lightsabre all the same. PICTURE: Andrew Santellan/Unsplash
• Lightsaber duelling – made famous in the Star Wars films – has reportedly been recognised as an official competitive sport in France. The French Fencing Federation has officially granted it the same status as bouts using more traditional weapons, including the foil, epee and saber. The illuminated lightsabre replicas are designed to look and sound like those in the films but, being made of polycarbonate, are unlikely to cause the same sort of damage inflicted by the laser weapons used by the likes of Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader and Yoda.
• From a distance he must have cut a desolate figure – not wearing a coat and hugging a pillow as he stood motionless in snowy conditions in the US town of Jordan, the appearance of the man prompted a call to local police to check on his welfare. Except the man turned out to be an advertising cardboard cut-out of Mike Lindell, CEO of the company MyPillow (a clue might have been the big smile on his face). Police were very gracious in their response, saying on Facebook that “Those cardboard cutouts sure can look real from a distance and the caller certainly was not wanting to get too close thinking who is this deranged person standing outside in the cold hugging a pillow; always better to call the police” (sic).
• You can image their shock. Three men were reportedly working on a dam in south-western Estonia when they spotted a dog struggling in the nearby icy river and rescued it, taking to an animal shelter. It was then that they learnt the rescued animal wasn’t dog after all, but in fact a one-year-old wolf. Suffering from shock and hypothermia, the wolf, one of about 200 or so in Estonia, took a day or so to recover before it was released back into the wild – with a GPS collar.
