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

*note to self* - go to optician and at least get some dailys for glamorous nights out and swimming.

As if....



B

Another night only sleeping 3 hours. I'm too old for this.

Teuchter, MR dear, I am congentially impossible to offend, don't worry, and of corse I you as well!

*offers Kelli Some for her hangover...*

*hugs Amy very gentley*

And B, I for one certainly don't notice or care about hairy armpits.

I'm not entirely sure about daily diposables, I like not being able to see when I'm swimming, mainly because the Unievrsity pool is full of serious atheltes composed entirely of muscle, and they scare me. It's easier not to be self conscious of your own body when you can't see other peoples, when I'm swimming other people are sort of pinkish blobs that I try not to swim into.

Which reminds me I must book some swimming lessons, I'm really enjoying swimming but I can still only do backstroke.

*pause*

Rung the local pool and found out about swimming lessons,..I'll be starting on Monday.

Decisive moment last night: At 2.25 am, our hostess went "Oh drats - G&T .... We haven't had any G&T yet..."

So we did...

Good thing I am surprisingly without hangover.

Less good thing is that going to bed at four - and yes, I did send a long look t'wards the PC when I passed it and considered dropping a note in here that would have looked surprisingly like kelli's - is one of the few things that in the following day will remind me taht I'm not 18 anymore.

I'm going swimming this afternoon - and won't be able to see a darn thing without my glasses .

Teuchter's Observations on Life - Number One
In every public swimming pool in the UK - and possibly other countries - there is always a person, usually but not always male, who thrashes up and down the pool noisily, with total disregard for anyone who might be within striking distance of his flailing limbs. This person is called a walrus.

I need to get some swimming lessons too Z. Just can't seem to get the hang of the breathing at all and end up with a sore neck becuase my posture's all wrong.

Hah Santra - the reason you are not *yet* is because you are still

*feeling smugly virtuous, and doing taxy things....*

B

Hairy armpits aren't really a viable option for an ant. *draws mental picture*

OK, Teuchter, since you asked...

I got into this fix by being kind. Someone I knew - though not well - needed somewhere to stay for a few days, so I invited her to stay at The Nest. She then proceeded to get right up my clypeal channel, so to speak, by whingeing about everything - and I mean *everything* - and making unreasonable demands throughout her stay. Apparently my house smells of embalming fluid, the inside of my kettle is suspect, the fruits grown in this country are insufficiently tropical for some reason (I can't think why, can you?), the plumbing in the UK is primitive, Yorkshire is cold, and so on...

[Actually, she has a point about Yorkshire being cold. I'm working on a scheme to have it towed to warmer latitudes .]

She insisted on going to a Chinese buffet restaurant even though I told her they served cr*p food. She ate an unbelievably enormous number of starters - deep fried stuff - and then complained about how fatty everything was. She didn't like the saki I'd ordered - apparently, where she comes from, saki is never served hot and she's sure it's not served hot in Japan because she's very well travelled so she'd know obviously. So she ordered the next round and bought... [suspenseful pause]... port. Port?!

I was just so incredibly p*ssed off that I stopped talking to her and I *never* do that to anyone .

After four days it was time, much to my relief, for her move on to a new part of the UK but then it became clear that she had way too much stuff to carry on the train. Her solution was to *tell* me (not ask) that I must visit her (300 miles away) in order to deliver the remainder of her stuff . But it was more than even an ant can carry, and I didn't want to go anyway, so I refused point blank. She was stunned into silence .

Thus much stuff was left at The Nest but the downside of this, of course, was that she had to hire a car to come and get her luggage herself, and this would mean spending another weekend trying to entertain her .

At this juncture I have to confess a few things. *hangs tiny head in shame * I have a file on my computer containing detailed road directions to The Nest and a nifty map, but I didn't send it to her . I prayed for snow . I also hoped she'd have an accident on the way - not a smear-across-the-road dead-in-a-ditch smash but just a minor prang - so that she wouldn't get here .

Sadly, she got here safely - although not without getting lost several times . She even ended up, somehow, in the middle of Oxford, which is no place to be during the Friday rush hour . And her cellphone was on the blink . I am a bad ant .

She moaned throughout her stay. The British postal service is dishonest and steals her mail... the banks don't open on Saturday mornings (my fault, apparently <shrugs&gt... Yorkshire is still cold (really? in January? who'd have thunk it? )... her new line manager is mean to her (as was the last one... and the one before that. Do I detect a pattern?)...

I took her to a country house dating back to Tudor times; it has extensive grounds landscaped by Capability Brown, panelled halls, ancient family portraits, Chippendale furniture and a ghost. I know some of you American types would sacrifice a limb for such an opportunity but she barely looked at anything. Instead she kept up a constant stream of complaints and glanced dismissively at views, paintings or bits of furniture only if I drew her attention to them specifically. In the end, she got ahead of me in the tour of the house, finished in record time and came back to find me to announce we were leaving. I'll have to go back to do the house tour properly .

Yesterday evening we saw the film. Film buffs might like to note that I am completely wrong in my belief that the leading actor is Jamie Foxx. It is, in fact, Will Smith. So now we know.

With hindsight, perhaps it wasn't the best of films to which to take a rabid racist.

She accused me of hiding her car keys this morning . I may be a wicked but, believe me, there's no way I would have done anything to delay her departure. I invented a forecast of snow to persuade her to set off early. Was that very bad of me? I gave her a *very* detailed set of directions to get home .

Now, B - that wasn't nice at all...

(I hope not - I have boldly driven in my car to my Mom's - wher I rather soon will have to face drilling holes into the hardest walls I've come across in my life in order to put up some lamps. Maybe the resulting noise will prove whether you're right... )

[BB]

I'm pleased to say I finally found the missing bits I need for my tax return and was able to click the submit button last night.

The bad news is, I owe them almost a grand! ouch!!!
Which means I don't have the spare cash I thought I had to redo the kitchen.

Also I've just realised that I forgot to bring some of the stuff, I need to complete this weekend, home from work, so I'll now have to trudge off to the office instead of going to the pub for lunch.

As for swimming I had my annual swim in the sea back in the summer, I must force myself to go and retry our local pool as they have done it up since I last went there (a few years ago)

Missing Word Round.

The word missing from post 1247 is, of course, the title of the film, 'Ray.'

It's well worth seeing. Good acting, great songs. At 3 hours it's a bit long though.

Amy - I don't think you've been too bad an ant What I do think is that you're a very well writing ant - I had a couple of s at your unrolling of that story...

I hope I could have been halfways as patient as you were.

Have to and start doing damage to some walls....

Amy, you are a very patient indeed. I would have killed her.

I'm sorry for your ordeal, but it made a very entertaining read for the rest of us.

Oh Amy. It is HORRIBLE when people are so incrediby negative and = well - spreading.

I now am incredibly grateful to the goddess that I had found my lovely prudish 26-year-old land-lady, instead of camping with your visitor for a fortnight. (Have I guessed right?) My brother would say it is because of where she is from. He growls every time he goes there, and doesn't stop growelling until he is safely back at his.

I now need to take some papers to my accountant, get dressed, do the washing up, pack the car, and generally get my backside into gear. Well, get dressed first, obviously. But you get the idea.

B

Amy you are indeed a very patient I don't think I would have bothered inviting her, I am rather callously picky about my friends. I don't have time to see my friends as much as I want so I don't spend my free time with people I dislike.

Great story, Amy, even though it was h*ll to endure at the time. You should submit it to .

I hope Ben is going to get dressed *before* going to see her accountant. On the other claw...

I really couldn't leave the woman homeless, Z. And, once she'd got here, there was no other way to resolve the luggage problem.

I can laugh at it now, WM, but at the time I could only retreat here from time to time and grind my mandibles. Thank you, everyone, for your patience .

S is hoovering the insides of our suitcases. This fever for cleanlinesss overcomes him occasionally.

Amy, I'd seriously write to the woman saying 'I am sorry that you thought my hospitality was so little worth your courtesy or gratitude, and therefore to spare you its burden ever again, please do not write to me, telephone me, or visit me ever again. Thus you'll be spared the need to bitch like a harpy with dyspepsia, and I'll be spared having to endure you doing it.' Really, some people ought to be told. Or spanked.

When I was quite a little kid, about ten or eleven, an American author was spending the summer at the hotel whose pool we used to use. She was greatly tickled with the fact we spoke English (this was in Italy) and as she was bookish too, she and I became quite good friends. She had a very deep voice, was very thin, and had no hips or breasts to speak of. One day as we sat side by side I decided to ask her about the great desire of my heart - how to be a proper writer too. So I began 'Can I ask you a question?'

To my intense surprise she leapt up as if she had been stung and said in a very angry bitter voice 'Oh yes, am I a woman or a man? Is that what it is?'

I luckily immediately said 'no, I wanted to ask you about writing,' and she had the good grace to laugh at herself, and apologise for losing her temper, and explained that she was asked about her gender all the time and was sick of it. And so we parted best of friends and she went back to America and I never saw her again. I don't even know her surname. Her first name was Jan or Jannie or Jana, her partner called her all three...

Anyway, I later found out the whole village had been abuzz with speculation about her gender. Poor lady. I KNEW she was a woman because she said she was. What more could possibly be to it than that? I don't know if she was born XX or XY or XXY or what, but remembering the pain in her voice when she thought she'd be questioned AGAIN, to this day I think it rude beyond belief to question or doubt anyone's own gender identification. Large chnks of my family, however, get incredibly stupid and judgmental about this issue - mind you, I hesitate to use such a fair and important word as judgmental, really, because they are most surely NOT exercising their judgment. I shall say bigotted instead.

I have never knowingly hoovered a suitcase.

Thanks for the phrase 'bitch like a harpy with dyspepsia,' Ag. Your atom-splitting incisiveness is, as always, both accurate and admirable .

Oh Amy - that was one of the funniest things I've read in ages. Not much fun living through it I'm sure.

Guests are like - they go off after three days.
By the sound of it, yours went off after three minutes!

Ag - in my younger days I was a bit like your American lady - had no breasts or hips to speak of - and I was tiresomely often taken to be a boy - even when wearing make-up and nail varnish. (That David Bowie has a lot to answer for!)
So I can identify with some of her feelings though thankfully, I have not had a lifetime of it to put up with like your friend did.

A further confession while I'm getting things off my thorax. She used my computer to write some covering letters for job applications and asked me to format and check them. I did sort out the formatting but I left the appalling grammar and spelling untouched. Let's hope someone is looking for a semi-illiterate art teacher. Come to think of it, I've known earthworms with more artistic ability.

Oh dear .

It must be the build-up of formic acid affecting my manners. Matina, do we have any milk of magnesia?