A Rochdale woman was left devastated today after discovering that she will now be looking after her neighbour’s children for the next three Sunday mornings in a row.

Sharon Smith from the Falinge area of Rochdale accidentally asked her neighbour Paula Harrison to let ‘her know if there was anything she could do to help out’ during a chance encounter at the recently refurbished Rochdale Waitrose.

“It just sort of happened,” a bereft Sharon told us, “I tried to avoid eye contact with Paula in frozen foods but before I knew what was happening she was talking about her Dad’s stroke and it just sort of came out.”

Paula, who apparently doesn’t know a brush off when she hears one, was embroiled in a scandal earlier this year after Barbara Dickinson told her that ‘they must meet up for a coffee sometime’ and subsequently called Barbara and made her meet up for a coffee.

“She’s a monster, how could she not know that was a platitude?”

Quentin D Fortesqueue is a founding editor of The Rochdale Herald. Part time amateur narcissist and full time satirist Quentin is never happier than when playing his lute and drinking a full bodied Bordeaux. He rarely plays the lute and never gets to drink Bordeaux.