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

France was hot for several days, so we worked outside in the garden in the morning but needed to retreat at lunch time. Well, that was our excuse.
When we first arrived, the plum blossom was just starting. It was lovely for a couple of days, covering the hillsides with lacy white lines. Then it was over. The long eared owl sat in one of our trees one afternoon, and we saw swallowtail and Cleopatra butterflies. The name of the latter is wrong really, because it's the male that is bright yellow with an orange flash on the wing - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonepteryx_cleopatra

Beautiful flutterby butterfly! Lovely description of your trip. I love your owl, and the description of the ephemeral plum blossom. Is that the right word, ephemeral? As in fleeting, transitory.



Still not home yet. . My brother in law came down from Edinburgh to Brighton for a guitar workshop, and to see us, in that order, , so been busy.

Been learning my new synth, playing it half the night. I find it good for the brain, it soothes my synapses. Good to soothe the synapses. What is a synapse? Ahhhh I'm making the music now. It doesn't sound like a radio with a nervous breakdown any more. It sounds like a waterfall with purple sparkly bits.

That sounds good - music like a waterfall with purple sparkly bits.<
I don't think I'd be any good with synths. My husband bought me a new camera for Christmas and it's got so many modes and functions I get in a tangle with it. I thought I'd deleted a whole load of pictures but they were still there.

If you have pictures to share, send them to MVP. We love pictures from reseachers.

My pictures aren't very good, Elektra.

OK, just keep practicing---at least with digital you don't have the expense of film and you can find free programs to make ho-hum pics look artistic.

Morning all! I know what you mean, mvp, about digital cameras. When I first got one, and it just a little basic one, it took me a week of sleepless nights to attempt to figure out the instruction booklet, let alone put it into practice. . I gave up after that. I thought I would mysteriously develop a technical brain overnight, but it didn't happen.

So now I just press buttons and get lost in menus, , and hope for the best. I spend my life lost in menus, I have my finest thoughts there.

In fact, my favourite photos tend to be born in lost-in-menu-land.

I wonder if your photos are protected, that's why they didn't delete? There's a protect option on the menu somewhere, perhaps you pressed it by mistake.

Good to protect photos by mistake, better than losing them by mistake.

My husband took an amaaaaazing photo of the Brighton wheel the other day, with his little Kodak snapshot camera. . (which he doesn't understand. ). I was going to send it to Mister D, but it got deleted, grrrrr. He does have a print though, so I might try to scan it when I get home.



I've just been in the synth shop in town having a laugh with the lads. I have no technical understanding of the synth whatsoever. It's good though, I can twiddle knobs at random, sending me on a sonic journey, from which I never return. The only way is forward. .

Daphne Oram is my hero and guiding light. I've been on about her before.

I'm running a bit late with my next piccies for the post. I haven't forgotten though, I've been a bit diverted recently, there might be a bit of a delay.

PS mvp, I'd love to see your photos of France, any that you want to publish, really I would. In fact I insist.

If I can find one that's any good, work out how to resize it, copy it to our desk top computer and email it.

Yay!



It's a lovely Bank Holiday. I don't normally make statements like that about a Bank Holiday, but this one really is.

I'm relaxed now, that's what it is. I got a bit tired and wired at the end of our trip, a lot going on in the familial department, nothing I can do about it, I just hurt when people are hurting.

However, I'm not in that department now, I'm home and in the sock department. What? . Sounded like I was in a department store. First floor for emotional upsets, second floor for socks and underwear, third floor for interdimensional fruit smoothies and alternative endings.

I think I'll live on the third floor.

I've been writing crazy pieces on my analogue synth, a thousand blue petals flutter through electrical frequencies while illusions tap dance through the static.

Sort of thing.

And then there's city lilac. This is the Bank Holiday of the city lilac in the rain. Today I passed a purple lilac tree in the park, so I stuck my face in it to inhale the exquisite fragrance, and emerged with rain drops all over my snout. heheh.



If I could photograph the light effect of synth music I'd be a happy person.

Can I join you for interdimensional fruit smoothies and alternative endings? that sounds good.

We spent the morning waiting for the rain to stop. Then we went for a walk to a windmill. I enjoyed the windmill as this is technology I can understand. The whole thing turns on a massive oak post. The wooden sweeps(which is the correct term for sails in Sussex)are on the sme shaft as the big cogged wooden wheels which turn smaller cogged wheels which turn the millstone. Wood and stone, corn and flour.

Yes! Hullo mvp!

Funny thing, I just broke off from writing a particularly challenging and totally awful piece of music , to urgently tell my journal that I would really like to find a department store that sells alternative endings and fruit smoothies on the third floor. And lo! you said you'd join me.

This is meant to be. Where can we find this store?



I love your windmill description. I just learned how windmills work. Thanks! You could write a Guide Entry about it. Please? I wonder which windmill you were at? I'm obsessed with the windmill at Rottingdean, although I've only seen it from a distance. I take photos of it from the Kipling Gardens.

I wonder if I've ever sent my Rottingdean windmill photos to Mister D? This could compensate for not having got to Brightling on this trip. Hmm. Nothing will compensate.

I was raised in a village named Windmill Hill, nr Herstmonceux. There's a windmill there. On a hill. No, really? . It was derelict in my childhood, but they've restored it now and 'tis open to the public. Never been. I should.

Did you find a France photo for and manage to do all the technical things?



My Disappearing Fox just ran round the back of the photo and reappeared through the left hand side of the frame, just the snout and ears.

Is this comprehensible or in any ways relevant to windmills or anything else? No. . I'm trying to finish my Disappearing Fox story. I'll keep you posted. As if you need that. . I need an alternative ending. And a fruit smoothie.

Glad you are enjoying May daydreamers, don't forget to check out CC's lovely image in this weeks post. Check out the gamboling lambs in the editorial and my book report as well as DG's new series of Art History 101 and funny war stuff. Also write up your Maying experiences for the May create challenge.

Lots of catching up to do, then! . How can I resist that preview. I'll be there! Good way to spend Bank Holiday Monday in fact, reading .

Now I must sleep, my brain has travelled five times around the bend stopping only to buy a pack of cheese sandwiches in a roadstop called I Remember Yesterday But Not Tomorrow.

I've sent my windmill description to Create for their 'Nuts in May'theme.

Nuts in May? That must be a euphemism for something altogether saucier.

We're becoming quite louche - thank Magwitch.

I enjoyed your windmill description, MVP.

Nuts in May?

Nuts usually fruit in the autumn.

Conopodium majus, or groundnut, was traditionally gathered in May by English children.

It is an English nursery rhyme. To the tune of 'Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush'.

Fussy...

In revenge, I shall share this film I've just found, called 'Nuts in May'. About English people on holiday in Dorset.

It looks interesting...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptugM-zad9A

Hello Daydreamers.

How you all faring? Well I hope

Things have been difficult here, some big life changes going on which are challenging as well exciting, a few set backs and then all the little things really start to stack up.

Fortunately long ago we had booked this time off a break, usually general elections warrant a long weekend at the least, given that this one might result in a Tory decade, we took the precaution of taking of the whole week...

We weren't too sure what we were going to do with it, but have done a last minute booking to a log cabin in the woodland with wifi I am so excited. While it is not going to fix everything, it is going to be just the tonic, some recuperation, to find some balance and de-clutter my cluttered mind.

Mmm, not very daydreamy, sorry, makes up for it by brewing a big vat of Perculiar and leaving

Evening all!

Here we go gathering nuts in May, nuts in May, nuts in May .

Ah yes, I've sung that in days of yore.

Your what? haha.

I never could quite get my head around nursery rhymes in childhood. They always made me feel faintly nervous, as if there was a nightmare waiting in the wings dressed as a giant china doll or a slightly sinister teddy bear or something. Must have been my slightly fevered psychology.

Hilarious film, with deep undercurrents. An incisive comment on British life. . Never heard of it before. It seems to be a classic BBC 70s TV drama. Keith and Candice Marie are delightfully peculiar. .



Have a wonderful time away in your cabin, peanut my luv. . Sounds like it's just the thing for now, hope you can relax and take time to recover from the life changes and challenges and things that you are facing.



Life is good, I've been doing a lot of arty things, a lot of loose ends coming together. I've been setting the pattern of moment to music, as one does, unless one doesn't , and then writing down the patterns, hope to photograph them also, somehow.

Playing the synth just before sleep has had a remarkable effect on my sleeping patterns. Like, I sleep soundly through the night, without dreams. Apart from synth dreams, when every note turns into a curious and rather amazing plant, all twisty and tendrilly, but not scary.