Week gone by

EXCUSES AFTER

British Rail's legendary "leaves on the line" and the wrong kind snow", London's Millennium Bridge came up with one of the best excuses of all time. The bridge had to be closed after just three days because it was swinging too much. This week, after much thought, the experts concluded why: the wrong kind of walking. Most people put their feet one in front of the other as they promenade. However, when they felt the slight swing on the bridge they put one foot to the side of the other to steady themselves. This, though, created more lateral movement and so the bridge swung even more. Even more extraordinary was the bridgemen's claims that other suspension bridges the world over had covered-up their similar problems for fear of embarrassment. A swinging bridge in Japan was singled out for not sharing its experiences. So the failings of an £18.2million bridge in London are all down to the Japs. You really couldn't make it up.

URINALS AFTER last week's piece here about Westminster council trialling the first female urinals in Britain we have been directed to the Ideadollar.com website which is an "online ideas exchange". It has just awarded its first Golden Lightbulb Award - a prestigious affair which goes to the best idea of the year - to a chap from Southampton whose bright idea is to place plastic toys in male urinals to give men something to aim at. "The toys could be based on the old fairground test of strength machine," says the website. "A direct hit could be signalled by the recorded sound of a crowd cheering. The sponsorship potential in pubs is enormous." Sadly, this is already pass in the go-ahead Red Lion in Darlington where a Bravo TV sticker promoting Euro 2000 has been placed in the urinal. Above an empty net are the words: "He shoots." When you do shoot and hit the net, your warmth brings up more words saying: "He scores." It is worth having that extra pint to improve your firepower.

WILLIAM O'NEILL THE Caption Competition which shares this page is becoming increasingly popular and we can never print the names of all we enter. As he is up against such stiff competition, we pay tribute here to William O'Neill, 79, of Easington Colliery who last week became the first person to win a hat-trick of Pilot Pens. Many congratulations to him. His entry for Tony Blair's peculiar face-pulling was: "Crocodile tears for the great divide." Mr O'Neill is planning soon to set up a stationery shop in his front room to sell off his mountain of pens

.A BAD WEEK FOR...

TELEPHONES M'LEARNED

colleague in Westminster, who shares this page, reports an uncanny coincidence. Down in the House of Commons press gallery, he fielded a call on his phone from someone asking: "Is that the Coldstream Guards?" Although covering the debates between Labour and Conservative members is often like watching a war of attrition, our man persuaded the caller that he had nothing to do with the Guards. "I work for The Northern Echo," he protested, whereupon the caller revealed that he was in Darlington, the Echo's hometown. There was much amazement all round, but our correspondent was fortunate to have a real person to talk to. Here in Darlington, the Week Gone By phone has been plagued by a fax machine on repeat dial. Every 15 minutes every morning, this wrongly-programmed machine dials the Week Gone By and bleeps at us. This does nothing for the art of conversation and even less for stress levels. We haven't been able to get anywhere with 1-4-7-1 (number with-held) and our technical department has helpfully suggested bellowing down the phone at the fax machine in the hope that it has an external speaker and someone is nearby. This did not work, although it did entertain a large number of people. Any suggestions of how to rid ourselves of this menace are welcome - but don't phone them in, you won't be able to get through.

ENGLISH CRICKETIN

our moment of euphoria, we must remember that the biggest embarrassment is yet to come. Despite bowling out the West Indies for the second lowest in their history, England's long and noble tradition of being utterly useless on the sporting field means that we will still be able to snatch an overwhelming 150 run defeat from the Second Test today.