Alfa mo, it's me, Romeo

Percy, Percy, wherefore art thou, Percy? Obviously he's a Romeo trying to rescue his Juliet from the Asda supermarket shelf at Monks Cross. To explain: Former model Wendy Neale, now secretary to the Asda store manager, was a wow in her trim Elizabethan dress when she organised a Romeo and Juliet singles night at the store.

Single customers were issued Romeo and Juliet tickets with coinciding numbers. Object: To shop around for your fateful partner.

For promotional purposes Neil Foster, an Asda "greeter," played Wendy's Romeo, but really another potential suitor had his eye on her - and that was the mysterious "Percy".

After the event, Wendy received a card illustrated with a vintage Alfa Romeo. Having seen her dressed as Juliet, Percy reckoned he could be her Romeo.

"However, I never judge a person by what car they drive or what clothes they wear.

"I prefer to judge someone by how they are and not what possessions they have. How do you judge?

"Nevertheless, I do find you attractive so perhaps one day you'll see things differently and I'll be able to ask 'what light through yonder window breaks?' and you'll reply, 'Romeo, 'tis me in my Mini-Metro', and we can (slowly) drive off together into an Asda sunset (two for the price of one). Take care, Percy."

Wendy says: "Thank heaven I have a Volkswagen and not a Mini Metro or I'd have been really spooked, although I'm both intrigued and flattered. I'd like to know what he looks like. I hope he's not bad. Or should I say not Bard?"

Nay, Wendy you may not.

Would the last person to leave Yellow Pages please switch on the lights in North Yorkshire? Yorkshire Electricity simply does not appear in the new information preface of Yellow Pages which has just plopped on to thousands of doorsteps in the region. Under the Household Emergencies category, Northern Electric and Gas is writ large.

But Yorkshire Electricity which has 8,000 consumers on the edges of North Yorkshire is conspicuous by its absence.

Don't blame Yellow Pages, though. It's famous two fingers that do the walking aren't in a topsy turvy V-sign.

Its customer services spokesperson Tricia Fagg says: "There's no reason why they shouldn't have appeared.

"It's a free service. We asked and they said no and the customer is always right."

A pink-faced spokesperson at Yorkshire Electricity said: "It was our fault. Yellow Pages faxed through the offer and we assumed that it applied only to York where we have no subscribers, but in fact it covered the whole of North Yorkshire.

"Put it down to human error. We got the wrong end of the stick. We'll know next time..."

North Yorkshire firefighters decided discretion was the better part of valour when they were confronted with a large dog after being called out to deal with a gas leak at a roadside caf.

More used to dealing with towering infernos than colossal canines officers from North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service turned tail when they discovered the Rotweiller in residence at a caf on the A19.

Spokesman Terry Glover said: "We had got a call from West Yorkshire to say someone had reported a smelly leak coming from Chey's Place Diner, which is on the roadside near Selby.

"When we got there we saw the on-off switch of the cooker was damaged and causing the leak - and we also saw there was a huge dog in the kitchen.

"We knew we would have to shut off the supply but to be honest no one was too keen to go in - it was a very big dog.

"So we used a ceiling hook, which is basically a log pole to reach in through a window and turn the gas off."

The dog suffered no ill effects but fire fighters may find themselves dogged by the incident.

Politicians should stand up, have their say, sit down and shut up. That is the maxim, anyway.

But towards the end of the annual budget meeting of City of York Council, there was active encouragement from some to keep the microphone on a rambling Councillor Rod Hills for a few minutes more.

They had a vested interest, as did Coun Hills himself, who had put money on the scintillating budget debate finishing at 8.29pm - nearly two-and-a-quarter thrilling hours after it began.

Thus began a raucous verbal tug-of-war between those with stakes before 8.29pm and those after.

Even the Lord Mayor, who had his own wager, tried it on, claiming, as chair of the meeting, that Coun Hills was required to stop talking under some spurious rule in the standing orders.

Coun Hills was having none of it.

But even he ran out of things to say three minutes before he needed to, and, with the meeting winding up at 8.26pm precisely, the £23 pot went to Coun Alan Jones - the man who organised the whole bet in the first place.

What has gone wrong with that good old British tradition of queuing? The Post Office used to be a sure place to find an endless queue.

But at York Head Post Office in Lendal Street, this is no longer the case.

Yes, there always seem to be 10 or more people waiting to be served.

But you barely have time to join the end of the queue and mutter 'why-don't-they-put-more-staff-on?' when you find yourself at the front being beckoned forward by a counter clerk.

A new initiative by the Post Office has even dealt with those people who hold up the queue by getting confused over exactly which documents they need and not filling in their forms properly.

A member of staff now cruises up and down the rapidly moving queue, helping people sort out these problems before they even reach the counter.

Where can those who love to queue go now?

06/03/99

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.