With the world in turmoil with the third week of the war in the Middle East setting in and oil prices sky-rocketing, it is a relief to break away from the current world politics and look at the lighter side of life.
From Lego going to war to the dangers of not double-checking… Your weekly roundup of offbeat stories from around the world.
Only 399 miles out
You have to feel sorry for the Barcelona fan who made the long trek to England to watch his football team play Newcastle in the Champions League only to discover he had turned up at the wrong St James’ Park.
Instead of the legendary home of the Magpies in the northeast, he found himself the lone Barca fan outside St James’ Park in Exeter at the other end of England, nearly 600 kilometres and a world away in footballing prestige.
“My guess is he’d put St James Park in his phone and then just followed the directions from there,” said an Exeter City club official.
“He was pretty gutted and a bit embarrassed. So we sorted him out a ticket” and he watched Exeter lose 0-1 to Lincoln City.
But his trip may not have been completely in vain. A chain of British opticians is trying to track him down so he can star in one of their ads.
Lego goes to war
Parents know the pain Lego can inflict when you stand on it, so we shouldn’t be surprised that Tehran has turned it into a weapon of war.
With the US and Israel pounding the Islamic Republic, Iran hit back with an AI spoof of “The Lego Movie” that landed more hits than a thousand drone storms.
The two-minute propaganda video, which trolls Donald Trump and Israel premier Benjamin Netanyahu, scored an avalanche of likes by turning the White House’s own liberal use of AI to glorify Trump back on it.
But those who live by Lego can also die by it.
Trump supporters hit back with a chilling meme of Iran’s late supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — killed in the first wave of strikes — broken up into Lego bricks.
Best amigos
Even in grim times, love always finds a way.
Turkey and Spain are in the first flush of a wartime romance after Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez refused to let the US use Spanish bases to attack Iran, repeatedly posting “No to the war”.
Turks swooned at his defiance of Donald Trump’s threat to cut all trade, with football fans chanting “Ole!”
Social media has been replete with love-in memes, one depicting wolves — representing Turkey — chasing off the jackals (the US and Israel) attacking the proud Spanish bull.
Spain’s reputation was further burnished when its troops manning an interceptor battery in Turkey helped take out an in-bound missile from Iran.
Leave no clutter
To Sweden, the country which filled our homes with IKEA furniture, but also came up with the concept of “death cleaning” — getting rid of stuff as you age to spare your loved ones when you pass.
Margareta Magnusson, the author who took the idea global with the bestselling book, “The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning: How to Free Yourself and Your Family from a Lifetime of Clutter”, passed herself this week with all the lightness of being that she had preached.
“If you went to her house, you always left with something to take home,” her daughter Jane said.
“You had to be careful not to say, ‘What a nice cushion’ because then she’d try to give it to you,” she said with a laugh.
Thanks to her mother’s death cleaning, “I don’t need to lift a finger”, Jane said. “Mum had nothing in the attic, nothing in the cellar” but her place was “still very cosy”.
ALSO READ: Funny old world: This week’s offbeat news
