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

I am more than a little tired today. Perhaps I am not getting enough sleep.
Actually I think it is the amount of jobs, unstarted or unfinished, that are waiting for me to do. I miss the golf, though I am glad we were not playing on the stinking hot days the past few weeks. Competitions start again in Feb. and there is still plenty of hot weather ahead. I hope I am improved by then. The worst of it is that my aching hips seem to be getting worse. I thought warm weather was supposed to be good for jangled joints.

Nah. It's no good. Nearly fell asleep again. Guess I will have to have a nap. Later Cater.

I proved warm weather don't help Arthur after one year in the Caribbean. I was lethargic and tired most of the time.

I feel sorry that you are not playing golf. Why is the club closed during the holiday season? It doesn't seem fair that you keep it going during the quiet season and yet when the visitors start you can't use the course. Maybe I misunderstood you.

Went to see three houses today the first one was the house of our dreams 5 bedrooms and plenty of room for mother in law.

Paid some bills today, took the dog to the vet for sticky eyes vet said conjuctivitis but not too bad. Gave us some drops and of course that will be so easy. Putting eye drops in a dogs eyes, oh yes very simple operation that.

The rain here is unbelievable it does not bluddy stop that is why you are not getting much it is all over here and the mud dear lord is muddy.

I take it your air con is not working too well? When it is hot you just can't get cool. Just remember to drink plenty of cool, I am not trying to mother you but sometimes being a bit dehydrated can make you feel like hell and the pains worse honest it does.

The thing with the golf course is that it is a public course and we get our competition tee times at a reduced rate. However over January The population down here multiplies enourmously and they can make more money if we don't have competition days. We can still play individually on the hour and the half hour, but it really doesn't hurt to have a month off. Might even do some good. Anyway, the holiday hackers take about five hours to get around, and that is not pleasant on stinking hot days.

The aircon was a dead waste of money. It pumps out plenty of cool air but it doesn't cool the room much more than a couple of degrees C. cooler than the outside temp. And Kanga nearly drives me mad if I don't let her out. Of course, contrary as all cats are, the past few days have been quite cool and she has stayed in all day. They certainly trade on their beauty and cuteness.

House with five bedrooms! Struth!! Have you made your millions all ready?

You may be right about being dehydrated. I don't drink a lot of water. Six mugs of herbal tea, a couple of mugs of coffee, half a glass od orange juice, at least one glass of water with various minerals and the like, it must add up to a couple of litres surely. Since it never seems to stay in me long I don't know what good more water will do. It is hard enough to go out anywhere now with my P-problem.

Been a lot of smoke in the air again. Coming from the Dargo High Plains, a couple of hundred miles north east of here. And more hot weather on the way. They think the latest fire may have been deliberately lit.

The Ozzies and you lot are playing a 20-20 game tonight. It will be interesting to see how it turns out. I don't know who will be playing for us. They will probably try a few young ones. I have not watched a 20-20 game before, but when it is the Oz and the Brits I am always interested.

A five bedroomed house over here is not that expensive. Really it all depends on the part of the country you are in.

We have had a long talk and at the end of the day nothing would ever be perfect for us unless it was purpose built. Mother in law will want her own space and the ability to cook for herself and have her own stuff around her.

A large kitchen, a large bathroom/shower room is important to us, also the people who build houses seem to think that a bedroom is a bedroom if you can just about get a bed in the room and nothing else.

Blimey some of these houses are so small you couldn't even get a double bed through the door. In truth I want a home big enough to swing a cat. No disrespect to cats who will not be injured in this process but that is how I feel.

How did the England side do in the 20 overs game. My husband has given up on athe Cricket.

The joke going around England at the moment is.

1st little boy My dad is a policeman
Teacher oh that is really good well done.

2nd little boy My dad is a fireman
Teacher oh that is really good well done.

3rd little boy My dad is a male prostitute who works in a strip club in his spare time.
Teacher, really is your dad really a prostitute?
Little boy No, he is an English cricketer but I am ashamed to admit it.

England lost by 77 runs, but then, Australia did make a record score.

When I get Email a snail, done up in racing gear, comes screeching on to the screen, wags its tail and twiddles its feelers, and nearly always startles me dangerously. When I acknowledge it, off it shoots with the sound of a riccochet. I'd get rid of it, but it amuses me.

Not expensive? Well one man's expensive is another man's pocket money, but since you are nice enough to talk to me I will pretend you are just a little bit richer than I.

I liked the joke but it was a little cruel. Also I think the selectors should take the blame more than the cricketers themselves. Australia has been blessed with an abundance of talented players and it makes it hard to know who to leave out. I have always admired Andrew Symonds but it has taken him years to get a test game, and the selectors are just as likely to drop him when one of the old mob becomes fit. It is acknowleged here that it is harder to get out of a test team than it is to get in. I am in no way a rabid sports follower and the only reason I am interested in an Australian Rules football team is because my father and his brothers used to follow Footscray. In all their years they have only won one Premiership. But I will stick with them. Maybe this year.

It is hot again today and they say it will be hotter tomorrow, with a cool change in the evening, but no rain. Some weather prophet has predicted large downpours before April. Well, next weekend would be better.

Every time I use the drive cleaner it wipes out my membership to hooteetootee and I have to sign on again. A minor nuisance though as it cleans up some of the mess I make.

I worked very hard for much of my life doing overtime and working holidays and did earn some good wages. I don't drink, don't smoke and am not a woman who likes to shop until she drops. I was always fasinated by the game of Monopoly and decided that renting a house was really not good business.

By hard work and a fear of not having money I have managed to put a little away so we can now afford to buy a reasonably sized house certainly with the help of MIL. However, I am not rich.

I am a friendly dear old soul who is happy to talk to such an intelligent gentleman who lives accross the sea and gives me an insight to another land.

I googled Footscray City College which looks absolutely beautiful would that be the team you are talking about?

The English Cricket team will have to put up with the cruelty just as your guys did in 2005. They must grin and bear it. Although you and I both know that the selectors are to blame the buck will stop at poor old Freddie and Co. It is sad because Freddie breathed new life into the world of Cricket and English people started to like cricket again. Now it is football football and more football.

I have had a friend staying for a couple of days lots of chatter and catching up on old times we used to work together so we spent a great deal of time putting the English Health Service to rights.

Spent time looking around the shops and found all the Christmas stuff being sold off at half price or even less. Makes you wonder why they didn't sell it for less money in the first place then maybe they wouldn't have so much of the damn stuff left over, only I really don't feel like buying a Christmas tree in January or cards or decorations.

I don't suppose you know anything about Australian Rules football. It was originally confined to Victoria where it originated. It has always been sneered at by the northern states who are rugby orientated. They refer to Oz rules as aerial pingpong and the players are likened to ballet dancers. I don't mind this sledging as compared to no neck rugby players Oz rules players are very athletic. As I say, Oz rules was originally confined to Vic. and the teams were selected in various suburbs. The players were selected from areas within the teams locale with some country areas thrown in. The game is now spreading to the other states and gaining in popularity, consequently the parochial aspect of the sides has lessened and some teams have been combined so that the interstate teams can be in the League competition. Footscray is one of the few teams that are still original, though there has been some pressure to make them merge, especially when they have a poor season. Actually they are now called the Western Bulldogs probably to copy the yankee way of naming teams. I still think of them as Footscray.

One thing I think is good about the game is that there is constant scoring and unless it is a very close finish, you don't get that build up of frustrated pressure that you do in your football. We still get the occasional scuffle in the crowd, usually beer inspired, but nothing like the riots you lot aspire to.

I always feel guilty that I never worked hard. I sometimes wonder what I would have been like if I had not been saddled with my ridiculous problem. To be honest I don't think I would have been much more successful. At one time my father offered to put me through university, it was much cheaper back then, but all I could think of was to escape the confinement of classes. Having an above average IQ does not make you smart. I always reckoned having a good IQ was like having a high powered rifle, unless it was loaded and aimed at a target, it was just a piece of nicely shaped metal.

At the technical school I attended I was a sort of a friend to a couple of youths who later became famous. One was Peter Thomson, the golfer, and the other was Leonard French, who is a well known Australian artist. Len built a remarkable glass ceiling in the Victorian Art Gallery. Peter, as you know, won the British Open five times. The raeson I mention them is that at the age of 13, they both knew what they wanted to do. I think that is important. I never did know, and I still don't. Always a dreamer with quite a lot of nightmares.

I'll think about it tomorrow!

I don't think I went to school with anyone famous or even that useful. It was a secondary modern school for girls.
Oz rules football, has quite a reputation in this country as biting and punching with very little skill.

From what you say the guys are athletic and extremely agile.
I know what you mean about the nervy build up towards the end of a game especially if it is a scoreless draw. I think the English like football because most lads play as youngsters and therefore feel able to tell their favourite team player how he should be playing as he sits in front of the television.

They do say that inteligent people are not necessarily clever people, they often have little alledged common sense. I have quite a lot of common sense but over most things I am as thick as s**t

Found a wonderful Chinese Restaurant/Supermarket yesterday. They had so many interesting things. Spent ages in there just looking, so much stuff every kind of fish known to man and beast, every kind of canned goods and teas enough tea to sink a ship.

I bought some clams to make clam chowder, I am getting very adventurous now I have a food processor.

Australian Rules! Well it is pretty physical. I think no one would understand the skill required unless they played it. The speed with which players can acquire and dispose of the ball with a hand pass often amazes a slow thinker like me. As in all team sports there are hot heads too ready for bit of biff and I think there might be a lot of fire stoked in their bellies by the coaches. The rules are sometimes hard to work out, especially by the umpires, and spectators new to the game might be as confused as we are by the offside rule. But it is a great spectacle.

Common sense? I guess I would have to rate myself as an uncommoner.

Food is becoming a bit of a downer for me lately. I am 16 stone and I should not be more than 14. Every thing I like seems to be wrong. After a struggle I bought some sausages today. I like anything I can put tomato sauce on. So it will be snags and cabbage and mashpotatoes for lunch. I have my main meal for lunch and something less for dinner. I'm afraid I just can't get serious about a diet.

Everybody seems to be talking food lately. WJH is full of it. I don't go in for fancy stuff much and I'm not into shellfish. The only one I like a bit is battered scallops deep fried. Some fish is all right but crayfish, shrimps, oysters, leave them in the ocean. I am eating less flesh these days but I lack the commitment to be a vego.

You might be surprised to learn the Ozzies won the first one dayer, although your blokes put up a good score. I'm sure the tide will turn one day. Remember when the West Indies were all powerful? Where are they now?

When I asked hubby about the West Indies he said that it was because the ICC put a stop to their bowlers bowling above the shoulder. There huge bowlers and bowling style was unstoppable until then.

We have found that you cannot use the evil diet word without becoming constantly obsessing about food. If you are not content after a meal you will keep thinking about what else you can have.

We are eating more veggetables usually roasted or in salads with baked potatoes and chillie. I am also making soup. During hot weather who wants to spend ages in the kitchen preparing meals?

I think if I just had me to think about it would be egg and chips, pie and chips, sausage and chips and maybe the odd baked potato with grated cheese.

The English football season is alive and well during these winter months. The usual highs and lows anguish and heartbreak. They say that football is just a game. Others would say that it is the most important thing in the world.

Ah yes, chips! I had fish and chips Friday. A delicious guilt trip. The only problem with FandC is that Kanga doesn't leave me alone until she has had her fill of fish.

I don't know if it is the same in your 'hood but here they have taken to refer to dedicated fans as tragics. Football tragics, cricket tragics any kind of over zealous behaviour is tragic. Quite desciptive really. On the practice green at golf on Saturday football is the main topic. I get a bit annoyed because, surely there is something else in life, and besides, with my lousy memory I am unable to talk their language. In the same way that we already have hot cross buns in the supermarket, we will soon be reading in the papers how many days to the first game of football. They even have a pre-season comp. now. Playing in really hot weather. Anything for more dollars.

The weather has been pleasant the past few days but we are heading for another hot spell, and the bush fires are still blazing. If we could only have a week of solid rain, but there is none in sight. You know, if there is a god, he/she/it has a lousy sense of humour.

I have always known that whoever put the idea of religeon into peoples heads had a good sense of humour and would have made an excellent salesman. I mean so many followers, no proof of existence and always blame free when the product is shown to be faulty. Whe something really bad happens for instance, how many times have you heard people say, "Well it is Gods will". or worse God moves in mysterious ways. Donkey feathers!!!!! He is just a good salesman of inferior dreams.

I can almost see the picture of us taking back the bush brown and burned saying "Look this happened because of faulty weather, we had no bloomin rain for weeks, now what are you going to do about it?"

The salesman gives us a weak smile and says "sorry we are not insured against an act of God".

I was also told while training to become a psychiatric nurse that most salesmen are psycopathic with no thought about what misery their actions will create.

Football, the whole world has gone mad for football. Now it is all about money. Even our television programmes are all about football.

"Footballers Wives" an awful insight to the extra marital affairs, fights and furious behaviours of the ladies married to footballers.

"The Very best 100 goals of the Season"

"The Very best 50 goals of the Season"

"If this had been a goal it would have been one of the Best of the Season"

You know what I mean?

I don't think hot cross buns ever left the shelves over here in our supermarkets. They seem to have become an all year necessity, as have Easter Eggs and Fluffy bunnies. Do you have Cadbury's Cream Eggs over there? Here the first advert for Cadbury's cream eggs is a sign of Spring and Easter.

Its those bloomin salesmen at work again.

I haven't heard about the "Tragics" yet but I am sure it will arrive rather like anoraks and nerds. I agree the word is quite descriptive as some of our football fans are very tragic.

My theory is that the inventors of religions had no sense of humour. What they had was a desire for power, the need to influence people to do their bidding. Promises of paradise, threats of damnation, tools to manipulate the moronic masses. And still it goes on.

In a way the mass media is another religion. The power of the press is not just a glib phrase. As I am writing this there is a program on the ABC about super volcanoes. Apparently there have been several in USA in the distant past that were so huge that if it happened today probably half of the States would be wiped out. Since it would be several times the size of Krakatoa, the whole world would be affected. TV must have been created for the purpose of worrying the hell out of us.

As we go about our daily business we don't worry that we are walking on the relatively thin crust of a humungous time bomb, that the sky is not a ceiling but a thin layer of gas between us and infinity. I mean, things just are, no good worrying about what might be. But the media just loves magnifying the problems, the disasters, the possibilities of catastrophe. It sells newspapers. So does the drumming up of football fervour.

I think all year hot cross buns is a good idea. They are quite nice to eat. Especially toasted.Mmmmm! There we go, drooling about food again. How did your clam chowder go?

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.” – Dr. Seuss

I read this and decided to make it my own.

I haven't made the clam chowder yet as I need to get some good fish stock to put in it and I ain't got none.

You are right of course the media have become the new relegion telling us who we should think is wonderful and who we should judge as bad. I try never to judge in the hope that I won't be judged either.

The weather here is really odd. Lots of torrential rain, high winds but no cold weather in fact we have midges flying around, somehow it does not feel healthy.

Of course all we have had on tv today was the football Saturday being the big football day in England.

Took the dog for a walk and when we approached the duck pond he saw people throwing bread for the birds. Dog decided that the bread needed to be saved and fell in the pond three times. Smelly, muddy dog returned home.

I am still putting drops into the dogs eye. What a challenge that is I am actually putting a piece of jerk something or other into my mouth so that the dog stares into my eyes while I slop in the gloop.

You should be thankful it is only a dog you have to doctor. I have no hope of doing anything for Kanga. When I have to give her anti-biotics I have to take her to the vet every day. After the first couple of days I have to be sneaky to get her in the carry basket. If she gets the slightest hint, and I mean the SLIGHTEST hint, she is off like a shot. I finish up needing the doctor more than she does.

The arfritus hasn't been so bad lately. I still get around like an old man but not so much like a crippled old man. I am trying to drink more water but it is not easy. Actually the zeolite people say I should drink 2 litres a day because the zeolite has a dehydrating effect but they don't say if it is in addition to all the other fluids I drink or not. If I have to drink an additional 2 litres I may as well stay in the bathroom all day.

Did a little bit of work up the club this morning. I have been slowly hacking a path through some really heavy bracken with the thought that I would connect with a walking path that meanders through a national park. Imagine my surprise when I finally break through, (it was too tall to see ahead) and am confronted by a fence which wasn't there last time I was down there. So now I have a more or less useless path that I am loth to abandon after all that hard work. Well at least there is a good view with a nice country feel to it.

Well, I am so glad to hear that you are feeling less lethargic. I think that could have something to do with the heat as well as dehydration.

I had to laugh at the thought of you trying to pull the wool over the eyes of a cat to get her into her basket to go to the vet. I can just imagine it animals are so bluddy clever, sometimes too clever for their own good. Dogs eyes are still weeping I think it deffinitely has something to do with the duck pond and his great addiction to diving in it. He is out at the moment goodness knows how many times he will have dived right in.

The two litres of water you speak of is really any form of liquid as long as you are not talking coffee which dehydrates. Tea, herbal tea, watered down fruit juice even a few pints of beer should do the trick. I know what you mean about the bathroom, I am at that stage where I like to know exactly where the bathroom is whenever I go anywhere.

I am taking so many herbals and oils for the Arfur Ritis do they do any good? It would take a braver man than me Gunga Dhin to answer that question. All I know on the package is they tell you "It can help" "It has been known to help"

Yesterday I smelled spring in the air but it must have been next door laundry because today we have winter again.

By the way, your path sounds great a national park you say? Still as you say good views and country air marvelous.

I'm getting a bit confused by the way the title of this conversation keeps changing. But then, I am easily confused.

National park might be a bit grandiose as a title for the bit of bush behind our club house, although it does stretch quite a ways up the side of Arthur's Seat. Nor would our Arthur's Seat compare too well with the original. Australia is a very old country and what might have been great mountains once have been worn down to fairly modest heights. In my teen years we used to live just over the road from the beach in a place called McCrae, situated at the foot of Arthur's Seat. I used to walk up the side of the mount in those days without let or hindrance. Now I would have to go through a thousand backyards. There are just too many people in the world.

It seems there was a mini riot at the Tennis yesterday. It is a sad thing that so many of our immigrants are bringing their hatreds to Oz. We have always been a fairly live and let live country but it is all going to pieces. Not that we are not racist, but there has always been plenty of room to share until now. The song says "When will they ever learn?" and the answer is 'never'. Hundreds of petrol head hoons went on the rampage the other day and all the cops could do was sit in their cars and wait them out. I don't blame them. They are not paid enough to risk their lives trying to control these raving ratbags. Those morons will be bragging for years about their 'daring exploits'.

I read a future fiction a while ago where the business of organ transplanting was so huge that they kept running out of donors. So they started making more and more crimes punishable by death. Naturally the crime rate dropped so they made even minor offences a death penalty. I forget how it all ended but it sure made for a peaceful society, and slowed down the population explosion. Sort of a substitute for war I suppose.

I'm not looking forward to Death Day but I despair of the fate of humanity if it does not change. I'm afraid the good people will always be the victims of the bad.

Well, I don't know about you but I have not cheered me up. Sorry!

Raving Hoons you say, what kind of immigrants are they then?
We have it too the pakistani people hate other pakistani people and there are murders and hatred as you say it is a pity that these people cannot start a new life in another country without their hatreds and racism.

We in England are also rasist at times, but the government in their wisdom have allowed so many immigrants to enter this little place that we are now quite angry. The place has too many immigrants and to be honest the more they are allowed to pour in the more angry we get.

Our welfare just cannot afford to be handing out money to people who came to this country to work but suddenly need welfare when they are here. We feel angry that our father's and their father's paid in to get a pension and now because of immigrants chances are there will be nothing left.

Oh lord there she blows again on her bluddy soap box. Calm down Cate and take a deep breath.

The problem is when you get older all the mistakes that the government and younger people make are so obvious to you because you have seen it all before.

The only thing I can say positively is that 20 years ago I lived in New York and it was not a good place to be. Drug related murders and gang murders were rife. I have been there on visits since and found that the place is quite different. They seem to have changed their attitude since the destruction of 9/11.

As we usually follow The States I am hoping that things will change for the better here. However, looking at our leader, somehow I doubt it. As my old mum used to say you need a man with courage to change things and I don't think this PM has any courage and I don't see anyone out there who has.

I think of our PM as Jump UP Johnny. Whatever the Shrub in washington says, Little Johnny Jump UP says, "Yes Mr. President. You are right Mr. President!"

'Hoons' is the current derogative for those idiots who do doughnuts and drag race in suburban streets. Loathed by the majority and idolised by our moronic 'leaders of the future'.

I'm afraid our world is run by people dedicated to keeping the share holders happy while they line their own pockets. So what's new?

I gave my blood today and should know by Friday if Zeolite has made any difference or not. Nail biting time. If the PSA has not gone down or if it has got worse I will be pressured to have treatment. We'll see.

It is another unpleasant day with high humidity. They say it should change soon(?) amd maybe even a little rain. Seven houses were destroyed by fire yesterday, but no loss of life. Of course everybody is blaming the government. Cynical as I am I don't think our Premier's mob have much control of the weather.

Just microwaved a Chicken Ric-a-Riso. Mmmmm. Mustgo.

I can hear myself gradually becoming my mother, I hear myself saying things like "I don't know what the world is coming to" and "we never did those things in my day".

It looks to me as if somehow our leaders are actually led by The Shrub, I know he has our man by the short and curleys.

I will be keeping my fingers and toes crossed for you on Friday and hope the zeolite has done it's stuff.

We complain about our weather but at least it does not take too many lives as your bush fires do. We only see people die when they drive to fast in conditions they cannot handle.

My husband got the results of his blood tests yesterday. They were really scary his blood sugar levels are so high and his cholesterol is also over the moon. The doctor says this is something that does not happen over night so in the manner of blaming myself I see that I have been slowly killing him for years.

Think yourself lucky that you have only yourself to blame. I hope you enjoyed your Chicken-Ric-a-Riso whatever it may have been.