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

Woman's Hour - just now - item about plooks.

Oh, Ben... a friend of mine swears by lying on a phone book for bad backs. Apparently it hurts like a b*st*rd but it does help.

With a bad back I find the best things lying still (floor is good but getting up from there isn't), drinking (served by someone else) and complining, lamenting and whining. W*rking is not recommended.

Be carefull with the lapdog Ben. They have very very bad ergonomics. Small keyboards and no way of splitting the screen from the keyboard to make it easier. There was a column in last weeks Grauniad IT bit complaining about just those problems - http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,1546144,00.html

Eyetests - do it! You only get the one pair and they aren't easily repaired. I've used most of the big chains and a smattering of independents over the years and you will get good service from both. Remember though, you don't have to buy the glasses from the people you have a test with. I must get round to booking an appointment with my optician to sort out contact lenses soon.

The talk about labradors and retrievers reminded me of one of my friends who owns what she calls a St Labrador. A labrador lady was in heat, eloped and sneaked into the neighbour's yard with a St Bernhard on leash. The result was puppies that looked a lot like labradors to begin with, but kept on growing until they were somewhere between a labrador and a St Bernhard in size, with the colouring of a labrador except faint traces of lighter fur around neck and on paws, and a wider chest than most labradors.

My friend's St Labrador had been strictly forbidden to enter their living room. One day, when I was visiting, we had and in the living room, and one thing they hadn't manage to teach their dog was to keep him from begging food. He was standing in the doorway leaning more and more forward until almost half the dog was actually *in* the living room. He was leaning forward so much that I fully expected the dog to topple over any moment!

That's what Santra's can do! Very impressive!

That sounds like our dog. He's a lanky dobermann, and if he's on his bed he's not allowed to follow me to the kitchen. so he sits down and leans his whole body sideways, then turns his neck through 45 degress to look round the door and see what I'm up to. The positions that dog can balance in never cease to amaze me.

My friend's dog, a cocker spaniel, once managed to climb a tree and couldn't get down again. She just stood there barking at us until we were able to get a ladder and bring her down.

Cockers are inherently dumb. Ours once ate all the windfalls pears in teh orchard. He came back to the house and just lay on his side for two days. Every time you touched his belly he groaned.

[MTG{KEA}]

I have to admit that Zeppo is very badly trained. I let him go anywhere and do anything. Fortunately he is not a terrible beggar, he just sits quietly waiting.

But on the subject of intelligence, he actually is bright. He has picked up on many of my routines so that commands are not necessary. For instance, he knows the direction to walk (to the park vs downtown) based either on the time of day or more probably which leash I pick up. So being badly trained he pulls in the right direction.

[Mol]

>Rugby looked safer after that.


>So being badly trained he pulls in the right direction.
again. Well...

I was actually rather impressed with Castor () this morning. We'd taken the car down to the forest (don't worry - I did the driving ) and had our walk 'round. When I was about 30 m or so from the car, I saw a deer maybe 100m away, standing to check whether it was safe to cross the road.

I stopped dead, wanting to watch it - and looked for the dog. He was maybe 10-15 m ahead of me, and had some shrubbery between himself and the deer. Now - usually I would use the whistle to stop and then sit him - butI reckoned that that would have the deer run off at once.

So - and I was just as amazed as anybody - I just handsignaled him "stop" (flat palm towards him) and "sit" (hand slowly downwards). There he sat <- proud smiley.

I've used them on occasions when I've wanted to emphasize commands, but never truly trained them. Nice :

And the deer slowly and catiously walked across the road. Actually funny - they seem to know that it's best to cross at that time. The part of the forest it came from is one where dogs are allowed to run free, so they actually do go from there to the other part, where dogs must be kept on a leash...

[GDZ]

[Hyp]

I've just had a message that I've never seen before -- "Server Too Busy." Hmph!

My cats let me sleep last night, but we had rather a racket from a big daddy raccoon in my courtyard. My plum trees are coming into season.

And this morning I awoke to a valley sandwich, the first one since spring. The clouds are so low that they're cutting off the hills on either side.

New thread tomorrow. Huzzah!

Valley sandwich?

air inversion.

Don't get me started on dog stories!

Ben, I'm actually going to go see the doctor for my back. My right thumb and index finger have been numb for 3 days, so I think perhaps it's time...

Okay, why is it that I'm exhausted, but yet when I sleep, I can never sleep for more than 6 hours at a stretch? It's making me crazy!

Just low clouds in my case. So low that the clouds block off the top of the hills, and humans are the filling between the clouds and the ground.

I know about those.