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

It was announced recently in New Zealand - where the show is shot - that the current series will be the last. "That's all folks".

In unrelated news, Gay icon (not just lesbian icon as the yarn infers), happily-married New Zealander Lucy Lawless, who plays Xena, is pregnant with her second child. (At time of writing)

A question. In the first paragraph of the article it mentions five million people watch the show on a regular basis. Which small country is the author talking about - Pommieland (England)?

The real world-wide viewing figures are in the hundreds of millions.

Pommieland?
I never knew New Zealanders called England "Pommieland" thank you so much for enlightening me!

One theory why Australians - and by extension New Zealanders - call the English Poms (or pommy, pommie) is that the original British/Irish convicts transported to Australia in the 19th Century had the letters POME embroidered onto their prison garb.

POME has been variously interpretated as Prisoner Of Mother England and Property Of Mother England.

Another version of the origins of the word Pom is that all British immigrants looked like pomegranate after a few days in the hot dowunder sun. Pasty white with a red rind.

Pom is used in the same manner as the Septic Tanks (Cockney rhyming slang = Yanks, Americans), once upon a time, used the word Limy (after the early British sailors habit of eating limes to keep scurvy at bay) to describe the British.

40 degrees over your way, atm isn't it?
Yes, I'd look like a pomegranate...
All the best from a snowed-in Pom!

Sunday 31st 8.36am. 25 degrees celsius rising to a predicted high of 30 where I live in the North Island. It is actually snowing in parts of the South Island.

New Zealand is 1500 miles in length. Roughly the he same distance as London to Moscow.