Yes, I am Recumbentman. My other name is Andrew Robinson, I live in Dublin, and you are welcome to visit my own home page.

Good of you to drop in,

Welcome to my little room! Pull up a bent and recumb!

Stay cool, unmolested by passing traffic.

Be sure to wear the right headgear.

While you're here, look at some things we can do to support
Tibet.

Try on a thoroughly convincing theory of hobbits.

Gain some true insights about rainbows.

Learn the secrets of being infallible.

It's all quite simple, really.

Alternatively, express your deepest inner silliness in hootoo's own original poetic form, the Rimickle.

I have placed here a list of my edited guide entries; this is mainly for my own amazement.

If you have many hours to waste, read the longest and weirdest nonsense ballad in the language: The Ballad of Grimley Moer and if the bug bites, add to it . . .

I am a recovering crossword and su doku addict; nowadays I restrict my indulgence to long journeys and the like. I am however an unrepentant daily Scrabble player; our games normally take half an hour (record so far: 13 minutes). I have made a very useful tabulated list of all the two-letter words accepted in Scrabble this (east) side of the Atlantic, with definitions of the interesting ones like oy and qi; write to me (recumbent viol at gmail dot com — with no space between 'recumbent' and 'viol', all one word) and I will gladly email you a copy as a Word document.

You too can be a member of the H2G2 Philosophers Guild

I did study philosophy once, and my heroes are George Berkeley and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

I studied music under Joseph Groocock. I admired him so much I gave him the only promotion in my power, to father-in-law. (Well, his beautiful, brilliant and loving daughter did have something to do with that decision too.)

I am a viola da gamba player and recumbent cyclist.

I am also keeper of solmization syllables in this, the third age of music.

Turning 14 in 1962, I undertook to educate myself by listening to the bass line of whatever I heard on the radio. I am therefore a lifelong Beatles fan. When I heard "Please Please Me" I couldn't believe the Beatles were (a) only four (b) English (c) white and (d) their own backing band. They knew how to saturate recording tape like no others. And at that time no other guitar band wrote their own songs.

I could go on . . . so I will. They were very hard to categorise; they started out with non-standard chords ("She Loves You", which also had a refreshingly dirty guitar riff) but didn't get hooked on that; they had a unique liveliness to their backing vocals; they imitated other bands (for instance The Byrds in "If I Needed Someone") and improved on them all; and with the exception of George's, their lyrics were never vapid. (Well OK, "The Fool on the Hill" was. And "Looking Through a Glass Onion." And "Octopus's Garden". But nothing so vapid as for instance late Paul Simon.) I'll stop now, except to say that Paul McCartney revolutionised electric bass-playing. From a thankless treadmill, he transformed it into a nimble, witty and eloquent force, neatly avoiding the tempting morph into jazz bass-playing. Fair play to you, Paul.