Etc...

Hey, let's do it again tomorrow

Just in case May 28 turns out to be a banner day in Crawley, England, residents will be able to reprise it – and do so right away, too – thanks to their town council. In what the local newspaper, the Crawley Observer, calls "a break with tradition," the council circulated to 9,500 homes its calendar for 2007, which has made headlines because it turns out to have two May 28ths. Oh, and a Nov. 31, too. That gives the year 367 days – one more than would be the case if 2007 were a leap year. The error might have gone unnoticed until, say, Tuesday, May 29, if not for Rosie Manton. She's the mother of a son whose birthday is the 28th, and she'd been about to circle the date as a reminder of that when she "realized the council has put [it] in twice." She telephoned the council office to report what she'd found, after which some checking revealed that proofreaders also had failed to catch the Nov. 31 discrepancy. A spokesman for the council, which spent $11,406 to print and distribute the calendars, vowed: "Next year, we will get it right." But first, according to the Crawley Observer, the council plans to spend still more money ... on stickers, so every recipient can paste them over those extra days.