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

Then again, the Dry Stone Walling Association (who's brances built the wall) have a load of pictures of it in the process of being built and the finished article on their site - http://www.dswa.org.uk/Projects/Millennium/millennium_pics.htm

Stones

*Admits to the same fascination as Teuchter.*

Pity there is only one small photo of the Millenium Wall at that site (or didn't I look thouroughly enough?). I would like to see Phil's photos if there are any.

Sig. S, I and the two youngest spent a holiday in Cornwall about 15 years ago, and we feasted our eyes upon stone houses, -castles and slate walls. (No rocks or stones in this country except on the island Bornholm).

S. S's dream is to built a two m. high stonewall around the garden..

Simulpost

*Goes to look at Phil's link*

Plenty of ideas there Tartaronne
We found out about this wall a couple of years ago seeing a demonstration at the Tatton flower show and have wanted to see it since. Only just got round to it this weekend even though it's only about an hours drive from us!

Alive solvent and healthy, yup, I like that. I am alive, I'm solvent enough that the bank isn't knocking on my door and as long as I keep taking the medicine I should stay healthy

Thank you thank you that was beautiful

Oh my oh my. I have suddenly conceived a huge desire to Go There. Other persons obsessed with the beauty and marvel of stone will understand.

I have a labyrinth on my land here, 84 feet in diameter, we laid it out in field stone from my mom's farm. We only had to haul 18 tons of stone to outline the paths. I walk it pretty regularly. Suddenly I feel this urge to go out and make the single stone outline taller. The guy with the pickup (new term for hsband?) would probably be sure I had gone stark raving mad.

Phil,
Nothing specific I just thought halfway through this is more slanted towards memory and food is secondary. So I went and did something else. No big deal but unusual for me as I enjoy the programme.

On the leaving theme BlueShark seems to have gone

Could someone please tell me when Oetzi was posting so that I can read that conversation and learn what trolling is?

Also, what is the significance of the cattle prod? I have seen this mentioned in conversation after conversation (yes I have been reading at the archives) and I feel like a complete stupe cause I just don't get it.

I guess you are right about stickyness Ben - and this will be compounded by the usual summer doldrums. There does seem to be a focus on 'hey look what we can do with the technology' rather than making sure there will be a pool from which to draw the content. Have you seen the latest whizzbang idea with the AViators?

I'm not having much to do with the EG any more but I still read and comment in ask, but it is really quiet at the moment.

Hmh - we've all (or most of us anyway) have been 'new' here at some point so we understand how you feel. You seem to be finding your way though

I meant to say earlier and forgot: Go GDZ!

I think Mr T and I will be talking walls when he gets home tonight - a visit to the centre might be in the offing.

Some good pictures on that link, Phil - especially the one of the wall with stile-steps built into it. So practical - and a piece of art/engineering in its own right.

Alive, solvent and healthy is pretty good, though the last two seem to require more effort as I get older!

Dry stone walling does vary a lot from region to region. The walls in West Yorkshire seem to be considerably thinner than the ones in Gloucestershire, one can often see sky though them. What's peeving is that when they built miles and miles of bypass through the Cotswolds, they got Yorkshire wallers in to do the drystone walling. That said, they looked like Cotswold walls - you certainly couldn't see through them.

B

The cattleprod is awarded to already-established Salonistas when they turn up very late in a thread.

Thnak you Mr. D

*admires walls* Wow. *admires walls some more*

*Ahem* if I may explain (may I, Lil?) the Cattle Prod is an award given to the last person to join a conversation/thread before our esteemed hostess very gently chucks us all out of the Salon, gets the 'bots to wash up, hoover and replenish the pastries and samovars, shakes out the cushions, and invites us all back in again to recap and start afresh. The whole process is announced by Asteroid Lil calling for 'clean cups'.

(I myself am too new to the Salon to have met Oetzi, but from what I gather he most spectacularly got the wrong end of a stick during a deep emotional conversation, hurt some people immensely, got extremely rude, aggressive and cruel, accused various Salonistas of all sorts of horribleness, and then refused to go away and shut up in the face of absolutely everyone trying very hard to explain to him that a) he was wrong and b) being hateful. For a while, instead of a glorious and civilised arena for conversation and insight, the poor Atelier became a battleground *shudder*).

>> We only had to haul 18 tons of stone to outline the paths.

"Only" *giggle*

Blimey. I cannot remember when the Oetzi stuff broke out. It's not very illuminating, because the worst of the posts were removed and what remains appears bland enough.

I'm not sure what the official definition of a troll is, but I would call a troll someone who is deliberately nasty and offensive to stir up trouble. Of course, some people are accidentally nasty and offensive, and some people are nasty and offensive, but not with the intention of causing trouble.

I was pretty vile on a thread which Strangely Strange may remember, (the one with Struggling With Life about British Muslims) though I was doing it to make a political point and get people to think, not to be vile for its own sake. However, I did behave badly there, and apologised.

Oetzi was rather an odd case. I wasn't around much at the time, but he appeared to be housebound, drunk a lot of the time, and to have a problem with educated women, not to mention being agressively homophobic. There's an unnerving number of academics on this thread, and a number of us are queer in our various ways, and there were even more of both categories at the time, and he started being quite stalkery, sexist, homophobic and nasty.

None of your newbie-enthusiasm has come across anything like that Healing Hands. Yours reminds me more of the people who confuse "welcoming" (which we are) with "malleable" (which .... well, we aren't quite so malleable), and who then blame us for not adhering to their concept of what an h2g2 thread should be. If their other hang-outs are the Nighthoover smiley-fests busy blaming 2legs for making them giggle, then this thread is quite a contrast. But there's room for both on t'Internet, and long may it remain so.

However I really do respect your willingness to come to grips with this new medium, and it is something we have all had to adapt to. Kelli will tell you that I was a compulsive poster a few years ago, I had not learned the gentle art of lurking without posting. I must have been the Most Annoying Woman On The Internet at that time! Mind you - not much has changed there, I just don't lurk as far and wide, which was why I forgot Blues' departure, to be honest.

The end of the Oetzi story was that he went over to another BBC site called The Collective and behaved in much the same way there. He was SO extreme and SO ubiquitous and SO creepily nasty that the site hosts there eventually proposed banning him, and finally did ban him.

He kept ON and ON returning under new names and in the end I believe his wife had to remove a vital component within his PC to stop him making a nuisance of himself in other places on line.

I type too much.

Soz.

Ben

ME TOO.

Ben, thanks so much for the little history lesson. I'm probably not going to turn into a troll, sounds like way too much trouble.

"His wife had to remove a vital component from his PC" Can you imagine what it must be like to actually occupy same space with someone who is creepy, negative and abusive to the point where they are banned from more than one site? Poor woman. Suppose she left?

It was one of those carcrash-in-slow-motion watched-through-a-sheet-of-plate-glass events. I did feel sorry for her. He was so unstable and such a thoroughly nasty piece of work.

B

Actually Ben, I miss your ubiquity around the site - at least you are always a good read. I used to think you were stalking me *in front* - every time I went to post somewhere, I'd find you had beat me to it seconds before and said something far more sensible or witty than I'd been planning

<>

Too true!

Mr. D - One of those people who is subscribed to threads both silly and high-brow.

Maybe he was quite nice when he was on his medication.

Changing the subject: I am going to see about posting a couple of the butterfly pics.

But now I really "must" get my backside out of this chair. I have to fold sheets, do another two loads of laundry or face beginning the week of massage with only 1 days worth of sheets. This is because instead of doing laundry and housework this weekend I went canoing, swam a quarter of a mile in the river, and helped put up bird netting over the vineyard so the "dear little birds" wouldn't eat all our wine grapes before they are ripe enough to pick and make wine out of. Birds apparently don't care whether the brix is high enough.

Fair enough WA, There are some editions of the food programme that don't get me to want to listen to them

Oh dear, have I sparked the seed for Mr T to do some hard work in the garden Teuchter.

Ben, I'm sure I read in somewhere on t'internet (so it must be true) that when the Settle to Carlisle was built by the midland railway company, they used their local wallers and so built a different style than the local vernacular through the dales, so it has been happening for a long, long time.