Minimalist poet, minimalist lifestyle

Swiss police were called out to wake up a pensioner who fell asleep behind the wheel of his car while he waited at a red light.

Urs Maurer, 78, had stopped his car at traffic lights in Bottmingen but fell asleep as he waited for them to change to green.

Drivers behind him blowing their horns and banging on his window were unable to wake him and eventually called out police who managed to open his car doors.

He told officers he had just eaten a big lunch and had felt sleepy as he came to the traffic lights.

He has had his licence confiscated while police investigate.

A new hotel employee was asked to clean the elevators and report back to the supervisor when the task was completed. When the employee failed to appear at the end of the day the supervisor assumed that like many others he had simply not liked the job and left. However, after four days the supervisor bumped into the new employee. He was cleaning in one of the elevators. "You surely haven't been cleaning these elevators for four days, have you?" asked the supervisor, accusingly. "Yes sir," said the employee, "This is a big job and I've not finished yet - do you realise there are over forty of them, two on each floor, and sometimes they are not even there...?"

Well...no-one showed up for the first session of the writers' group; I'm not surprised, or disappointed though. It needs publicising more widely across the borough.

It wasn't a wasted journey though; I had an interesting conversation with the volunteer co-ordinator about some other projects I'd like to be involved with; a drama group, an art group and a walking club.

A German village is building a foot-high wall around its boundary - to keep out millipedes.

Obereichstaett in Bavaria has been plagued by thousands of millipedes every autumn for centuries, reports the Daily Telegraph.

Residents say the unwelcome invaders turn their streets, gardens and homes into something from a horror film.

Bernhard Koderer, 45, who lives with his wife and two children, said: "Last year was the worst so far. The road to my house was completely covered.

"You couldn't take a step without crushing a dozen underfoot. The smell was disgusting."

Hans Harrer, the mayor, said: "We have tried a complete blackout on street lamps in the autumn. But switching them off was not the solution."

Zoologists called in to advise were unable to tell the inhabitants where the millipedes - Megaphyllum unilineatum - came from, and instead helped design a metal-lined wall with an overhanging lip.

Poison was not a solution because so much would be needed.

Now, the creatures can instead be seen in their thousands crawling around the wall every night.

The problem is far from new: in the autumn of 1900, trains in the vicinity ground to a halt when millipedes on the tracks prevented their wheels from gripping.