QUIRKY WORLD ... Grave efforts to be the best

Hungary: In a graveyard in Hungary, solemn contemplation gave way to frantic sportsmanship yesterday as dozens of grave diggers battled to prove they were the fastest and best in the business.

Taking their places at plots selected by pulling names out of a hard hat, 18 two-man teams waited for an official to shout “Start!” before shovelling at the ground to dig a precise, regulation-size grave as quickly as possible.

“I don’t think this is morbid,” the Hungarian Undertakers’ Association’s deputy chairman, Zoltan Juracsik, told Reuters at the national grave-digging contest at the wooded cemetery in Debrecen, Hungary’s biggest city after Budapest.