Minimalist poet, minimalist lifestyle

Because the person who filled in the paperwork last week at the jobcentre put the wrong date [actually a date that doesn't exist - Tuesday, June 1st] I can't be re-registered at Reed's [where I'm attending the pilot group therapy sessions with the occupational pyschologist] until the forms are corrected and re-submitted to them. So, on Monday I shall have to go and sort it all out.

Bleeding bureaucrats! They literally don't know what day it is!

Ex-soccer star Leroy Rosenior was appointed boss of a struggling club - then sacked after ten minutes.

The former West Ham and Fulham striker broke the record for English football's shortest managerial reign after being introduced with a fanfare by Torquay United, reports The Sun.

Sports journalists were summoned to a press conference which finished at 3.30pm. Then - at 3.40pm - Leroy was told by the chairman that the Devon club had been sold to a business consortium. And that meant he was out.

Leroy, 43 said: "For it to happen ten minutes after I finished the press conference was a bit of a shock. But we had a good laugh about it afterwards."

Leroy smashed the previous record for the shortest time as manager - Dave Bassett's 72 hours at Crystal Palace in 1984.

He joked: "Obviously they thought I had done a fantastic job after ten minutes and let me go."

The post was Leroy's second stint at Torquay, who will face next season in the Conference after finishing bottom of the Football League. He was boss between 2002 and 2006 when he left by mutual consent.

Since then the club has been in a managerial crisis, with four different bosses in the hot seat.

Leroy added: "I wish them the very best of luck. They are going to sort me out a bit of compensation."

Serbs barter cows for penises

Serbian men are swapping their prize cows to get a bigger penis.

The bizarre exchange was revealed by the country's top plastic surgeon Srecko Djordjevic who said dozens of farmers obsessed with the size of their penis had traded in their prize cows for larger members.

He said: "The size of a man's member seems to play a big role in our society and the price of the operation, around £400, is almost exactly what a good cow is worth - so farmers are choosing to swap a cow if it means a bigger penis."

The urologist, who is based in the central town of Kragujevac, told the news agency Sina that the only problem had been that some farmers had unrealistic ideas of what they could get for their money.

He said: "Some of them want to add 10 centimetres and that is just not possible - at least not for just one cow."

Heart op pensioner kills snake

An 80-year-old heart surgery patient leapt from his intensive care bed and used his walking stick to beat a deadly viper to death.

Miko Vukovic spotted the snake on the floor of the hospital in Ogulin in central Croatia.

The snake is believed to have been brought into the hospital in a giant bunch of flowers where a discarded snake skin was also found by staff. It then made its way into the intensive care ward as it looked for a new place to hide.

Vukovic was with three other cardiology department patients during the night when he noticed the poisonous "vipera berus" snake close to his bed.

He said: "I was fighting for 10 minutes before I managed to kill it with my walking stick. The bugger almost bit me in the leg but then I let it have it right between the eyes."

Hospital officials did not comment the case.

The headline on this week's front page of the Doncaster Free Press -

CHINA SYNDROME

Every plastic bottle put out for recycling in Doncaster is shipped 8000 miles to the Far East.