h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

That's some amazing horticulture, ITI!

What are collards? Is Salton Sea the name of the area where you live? Like, a coastal area?

What do yams taste like? Are they the same as sweet potatoes? Sort of..



There's a helluva racket going on outside my window, as I type this, fireworks flying everywhere. Zizzle zazzle fizzle boom bang crackle.

According to my dictionary, a collard is a variety of cabbage that does not heart. Isn't the heart the best bit?

The only things I can grow in my Sussex garden are blackcurrants, which fruit enthusiastically although I do nothing to them, courgettes (zucchinis) which only just survived the slugs this year but eventually produced some fruit, and potatoes. I didn't even plant the potato plant, it just grew and produced one enormous potato and several smaller ones.

Yeah, just make a new journal entry and call it NaJoPoMo, if you like.

You can go on the FP and add your name to the list for Create, too.

Collards are a kind of green that take FOREVER to cook. I'm not a big collard fan, I prefer mustard greens. Or even turnips.

Hey, I see on yahoo that collards are going to replace kale as the new yuppie food for smoothies and such. But they are sorta tough and require a fat source like ham hockes or streaky slab bacon to break down the cellulose. For that reason they aren't so hot for fat free diets unless your digestive system has multiple stomachs such as what cows have.

Really? hmm, interesting, the collard, or collards. The new kale, eh? Kale smoothies? . Collard smoothies?

It would be good to have a few stomachs like the cow, I think. Help with the digestion, especially if one is going to launch into collard smoothies. A bit rough when you get a stomach upset, though. Stomachs two and four are feeling a bit rough today.



So, did you eat the one giant potato mvp? How did the plant grow a potato without even being planted?

I can't figure out if my mint is dead or resting. All the leaves have disappeared, but someone told me they'd come back. Does mint always look dead in winter?

Something is eating my sage, and it was eating my mint also, before all the remaining leaves fell off. Can't be slugs, it's the top leaves getting eaten, and the plant is quite tall now, it must be something with wings. An airborne herb muncher.

My curry plant (that has nothing to do with curry) is turning into a bush, and it smells like a fine vegetable curry, mmmm The airborne herb munchers obviously don't like curry, so all the leaves are intact.

I think it might be my only remaining garden, when everything else is eaten by the winged fiend.

OK, off for a kale smoothie now. Or maybe I'll stick to brandy.



Thanks for the info on NaJoPoMo, my friend. I go through this every November, , and never quite get there. I think it's because I can never quite get there, even though I love the thought of it.

You are welcome anytime.

I got it together in the end. . A day late. but Lady November and her kind team let me in. Except I titled the journal the same as mvp, sorreeeeee mvp, I thought we all had to call it NaJoPoMo 2014, now I wish I'd named it Frank, because it might look confusing in the in-box, and it's soooo confusing, but November is yet young. And so am I. Not.

You're doing great. And so is MVP. What a tale...

This is going to be a wonderful November on h2g2.

Hi CC. I hope you're all right. I've been cavorting about in NaJoPoMo and realised we hadn't heard from you for a while.

let´s prepare her a bait:

Is this a good place to tell my dream from this morning? I don't usually have interesting enough dreams to tell you, but you might get a chuckle out of this one. Elektra laughed about it.

In my dream, I was hiding from somebody, I don't know who, but he must have been from some government or other, and he looked like Lorne Greene. (I know, this is weird.) I was dodging him in a place that looked like the airport terminal in Philadelphia, where the underground has a station. When this pursuer came along, I pulled up my parka hood, and pretended to be a hobo. Another hobo asked me for spare change, but all I had in my pockets was loose buttons.

Then I went into a glass-enclosed office on the platform. It was obvious that the other people there recognised me, but they pretended not to. I found myself talking to one of them, who looked just like the actor Keith Carradine.

'Am I persona non grata now?' I asked wrily. He grinned.

'Well, all I know is that there's a SIXTH question about you in the game 'Raiders of the Used Tombs',' was his reply. Then I woke up.

Elektra thinks this is hilarious.

Hullo luvs! (rises to the bait) Petunias!

I'm fine! Lovely to hear from you all! I've been cavorting in NaJoPoMo as well, which has taken up all my computer time. Been having a great time, playing my piano and making about as much sense as someone who just understood the language of primroses, only to discover than they were in fact petunias.

In fact its been really good. Every day I've played a new chord on my piano, then seen what kind of mental picture came to me. Today was 'The echoes still live in the larder cupboard', yesterday was 'The spaces between cubes'. Earlier in the month I got quite carried away by random equations, a psychic lady with peacock feathers in her hat, various glassy chandeliers and snowflake shapes and a lit up pyramid.

Now I can continue my piano studies here. hahaHAH. Aren't you so glad you woke up the daydream thread?



So how are we all then? News please.



OK, now I'm going to analyse Mr. Gheorgheni.

As if. heheh.

What??? That is one helluva dream, sir. What it means is that you need to write more stories, immediately. I know you already write stories, but you need to write even more stories. . This dream is a story, I'm currently in the sixth dimension, whatever that is, and that cryptic ending makes me realise that the sixth dimension is in fact everywhere and I need to get to a bus station cafe.

Strange that you saw people who looked like Lorne Greene and Keith Carradine. The other day I was telling NaJoPoMo about a poet who looked like Cary Grant.

Which is in fact completely irrelevant, and now I think I might go play your dream on my piano.

I wish I could hear that music.

heheh. Yes. My piano playing has taken new routes since doing my study with NaJo. Interesting routes. Unusual soundscapes, best avoided, unless wearing pink and yellow striped earwarmers.



Talking of pink and yellow striped earwarmers, which I don't really have, I just said that because I haven't had enough coffee, yet, here's a postcard from Brighton.

Been busy with family visits, and watching boats and starlings.

At dusk the starlings group into flocks, which look like swirling black clouds, then they roost under the pier until dawn.

It's c-c-c-cold on the bikes, but we love that, the cold air feels quite healthy, especially mixed with salty sea.

We cycle in to the wholefood shop to buy bread and cans of chick pea curry, greeting all who come our way beside the bike track. A bedlington wearing a bandana, a guy dressed as a polar bear blowing soapy bubbles, joggers, hikers, bikers, roller skaters, skateboarders, shingle sculptors, and someone helping the police with their enquiries.

Who was it who poetically said that Brighton 'looks as though it's a town helping police with their enquiries?'



Ah yes, but 'tis lovely, and the Royal Pavilion looks like the Taj Mahal, and their are pigeons in the Pavilion gardens, although the deck chairs are folded away till Spring.

Hello CC. I'm glad to see you back.

Brighton a town that looks as if it's helping the police with their enquiries? I'm not sure it isn't more that the police are conducting enquires into Brighton's attempts to have a good time.

When I was last in Brighton, the station was full of police. And there was a crowd of men, many wearing the blue and white of Brighton and Hove Albion, being directed to the platform where the train to Falmer was waiting. The train was packed to the doors, like the Northern line in the rush hour. I don't think the police were doing more than watching.

Hullo mvp!

Good to hear from you! How do you feel after writing your magnificent NaJoPoMo journal? which I found to be most illuminating, thankyouverymuch.

I intend to return to some of the entries I haven't yet read over the Christmas holidays. Ah yes, glass of brandy by my side, , when we're snug at home, with no distractions of the road, and visiting.



Hah! I guess those fans were heading out to the Amex stadium in Falmer.

It seems it was Keith Waterhouse, novelist, who said that about Brighton, re helping the police with their enquiries. .



It is a free spirited place, for sure. Very inspiring, despite the edgy shadow side.

Today I've seen a wedding with two gorgeous brides dressed in purple, not a groom in sight.

There's an almost full moon over the water, all silver shimmering.

Earlier, there was a group of elves smoking ciggies outside the bowling alley. Green felt hats, stripy leggings, tunics. Must be a feature of the season for the bowling alley staff, wonder what the pay is like. Not easy being a grown up elf, looking for a smoke. .



OK, hands up, who's seen Paddington? We haven't yet,but hope to when we get home.

How come it's PG rated? Surely Paddington is more interested in marmalade sandwiches than hanky panky?

I used to find the trouble with reading is that they come to an end. I'm beginning to find the trouble with writing is that it comes to an end.

What do I write next? I'm not sure I can come up with anything intelligent for Create's space theme. I need that moment.

And me? I can't shut up. I just did another Guide Entry.

The reason is clear: I got an email last night, and I know that come January, I'll be back into writing school stuff. So I have the urge to get these entries out while I have the time...besides, the material I found was so interesting...

You know what I find inspiring? The film 'First Orbit'. It's on Youtube, and it'll take you 90 minutes to watch, and it makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKs6ikmrLgg

Also reading the poem 'High Flight':

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qqVRBZO5gc

Maybe a dose of space fever will help?

Ah yes, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth. And danced the skies on laughter silvered wings. That's some poetry isn't it? That's amazing, haven't thought about those lines in years.

Yes, hah! yes. The space left after a reading a book or doing a writing project or something. I have it with songs. Sometimes I have to listen to a song over and over because it won't let me go. Until it does. And then I fall into the void, or into the slipstream it leaves behind.

And then I have to make a new life, selling postcards of fictional seaside resorts to passing thoughtforms.



So a dose of space fever eh? I have space delirium. .

We just ordered the DVD of Apollo 13 for Christmas. I saw the start of it in the gym the other day, and I said to myself I am never ever watching this film again, it's too tough on the nerves, I am almost sick when they take off, by the end I have itchy skin and funny eyes.