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

It will come fast enough so get as much into your life as you can then you will have loads of stories to bore all your friends and family with, it's hysterical watching them pretending to be interested when all they want to do is go down the pub

That's so evil.

especially if you pretend you need help around the garden because you are soooo old when in fact you are just a lazy old git and are as fit as can be

The people who know me would never be fooled anyway.
They know that I exercise.

Well then you'll have to think of somewthing else.......

Did anyone realise I was only jokin'?

Sorry just read the backlog. Put me in the 'I Hate School camp' I have one genuinely happy memory. That was leaving the horrid place. Yes uni was much more fun,but I've still spent 30+ years not using my uni studies.

Retirement! Hmmmm, sometimes I think I have been blessed with an outdoors skill that only frail bones will halt. May that be long in coming,30+ years spent in the countryside and coastal verges is not long enough!!

Even after the frail bones et in, you can still do *these* kinds of exercises:

--Jumping to conclusions
--Pushing your luck
--Stretching a point
--Running off at the mouth
--Lifting people's spirits
--Throwing in the towel.

That's an interesting list. Though wouldn't it be better to not have the frail bones, and do all those things as well as all the stuff you wouldn't have been able to do if you'd had frail bomes?

if you eat enough chalk you dont get frail bones, go and chew the white cliffsof Dover that should sortyou out

Sorry, there is no place for chalk in my diet. Besides, my teeth would not do well if they had to gnaw at chalk.

Getting visions of munching through boxes ful of blackboard chalk. Not very appetising.

Chalk,yuk. Gimme milk any time for strong bones. Bones are under our skin(lets hope they stay there!) and I nearly jumped out of mine yesterday(my skin, not my bones).
Reaching for a small Filler rock I nearly put my hand on a bloody Brown snake. These buggers are in the world top ten poisonous list. Deadly and real mean buggers to boot.

Sounds scary.

So, it was a bad day for you *and* for the snake. The snake was deprived of a nice meal.

It's a week later and the snakes just keep rolling1 today it was the turn of several blind snakes(harmless) and one Red Belly Black snake(isn't that a gr8 name?). They eat the young of other snakes so are to be looked after and shooed away if found.

You may be thinking that Australia is full of snakes...well it is actually, but not in the cities. I live in the country and I also excavate things and build rockwalls(Hedges), so I come across them much more than Joe Average Citizen does.

Its approaching Summer here so as the temp's warm up so do the snakes. Still death by snake bite mis-adventure is to be prefered to...'Attack and death by Rabid Badger!!!' Which a Pommie friend of mine assures me is one of the many perils of English life(along with your weather)

Rabid badgers!?!?!?! Never heard that one.

So have you ever been bitten by any of these snakes then?

Actually I have been bitten! 12 months ago(or so) on a Sat night about 9pm. I told son to let the little white furball outside to have a 'leak'. My son and the dog don't get on, so after ten minutes i went out the front and called them both.

As I stepped onto the small patch of grass that passes for lawn, I felt the unmistakeable feel of a snake under my foot.
Thankfully it was a little bloke(about a 450ml long,foot an a half), with a head the size of your thumbnail. A small prick(no jokes please) and the instant dread of......'Crap! I've been snake-bit!'(very american that!)
Captured said snake and identified it, then rang the hospital to make sure I was right in my diagnosis of the ramifications of said snakes bite. I was, and I went casually back to Sat night things(TV,Wine,bed. no more info) and hoped that I was right and sage advice was wrong(go directly to emergency and spend the day/night in contemplation of a lousy death).

Next morn apart from a headache I was fine. Snakebite is not that common and deaths to snakebite are rare. I think death by Bee-sting is more common. Death by Crocidile or Shark is more common. but it must be said that each year a reasonable amount of people get bitten by snakes. I am definitely in a tiny minority of peeps who have been bitten by a snake here in Ozland. As I said previously,I live in the country and my work brings me in to regular contact with these rather mesmorising creatures.

I'm sure you wish I had just said...'Yes I have been bitten by a snake.' Sadly I do prattle on!
cheers

Interesting story. Well at least you're still here to tell it. That's the main thing.

I think I remember hearing somewhere that there are so many stupid "cures" for snake bites coz most of the time when people get bitten they don't get injected with the venom and would never have died anyway.

Well I think you may be wrong in your idea that>
"coz most of the time when people get bitten they don't get injected with the venom and would never have died anyway."<

Thats a fallacy,as snakes reaction to biting is a bit like our reaction to sneezing. Try sneezing and keeping your eyes open at the same time. Same thing with the snake, try biting and NOT pumping your venom!

If a person has been bitten(at least in Australia) and has no real side effects, it is either a very small snake that bit(like my experience) or its non-venomous(think Carpet Snake..OW!).


Hey! Changing subject. Is 'Scouser' a dirty word? A friend here who moved from the UK was telling me to never trust a Scouser. I think he was semi-serious(he is an ex-Plod) Do peeps from Liverpool get cranky if you say that? Or do they just brush it off like we do, when we are called Convicts by you lot?