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

haha yes, I get it. . I'm reeeely clever. .

Nice one, Sprout. Saw this first in the AWW. Got me thinking about Spike Milligan and camping sites. Why did I think about camping sites? I forgot now. Have to go back and check. . Good thoughts though.

Love the lines

Ask Grand-ma(h) Jong (Kim-il – scary)
Or the Althing Thong (stretchy)

Biltong would have been a good one!

The nice thing about this poem is I wrote it in three evenings at the same campsite - so it will always be fixed in space and time for me...



sprout

That's the very best kind of souvenir, sprout. Thanks for giving us the benefit.

Yes thanks for sharing this. As a Yank who has never really been on a camping trip, I too didn't get the connections very well but it was fun, nevertheless, Sprout.

I don't think you've missed much, Elektra, not having been camping, except ah yes, camping sites, all that fresh air, very creative . Sprout could start a trend here, Poems from the Camping Site , a good project for the noohootoo. Except my camping days are over because I am too old to sleep in a tent, all that rain and pain. . I would like to visit a Southern site, like the South of France, except I would be scared about scorpions and things.

Ah, Spike Milligan is watching us - didn't he write a book of poems called Small Dreams of a Scorpion?

We never camped in tents. We just slept in cabins.

Mostly, people with relatives in the Appalachians or the Mississippi Delta didn't bother going camping when they wanted to get 'back to nature'.

They just visited their relatives who lacked indoor plumbing.

heheheh

I'm curious about these cabins now. Need a story or poem or drawing or something.

Golly, I wish I had a picture of the shack my great-aunt and -uncles used to live in, down in the Miss'ssippi Delta. It's fallen down now, of course, and they've all passed on (in that order, as predicted by my grandmother).

Not a lick of paint on the thing, of course. All wood, with a sloping roof. Two large rooms, big windows with screens but no glass, at least in summer. A tiny kitchen in the back. To a small child, the best part were the 'doorknobs', made of empty thread spools with large nails driven through the centre hole...the standard plank porch with an overhanging roof. Good place for dogs to lie, and people to rock...

Of course, the red water pump was special. I remember being too small to operate it, so I jumped on and rode the handle down. My great-uncle laughed. The outhouse was less fun, as we feared spiders. I stress that all parts of this outhouse were also of wood. Flushing had not been invented in rural Miss'ssippi.

The whole structure stood (well, leaned) under a giant tree, practically the only one for a great way across the cotton field on three sides, and the rice paddy across the road. In spring, the rice paddy flooded, and thousands of tiny frogs leapt across the road. My six-year-old sister caught a few dozen in a jar, then let them go (reluctantly, she was thinking serious pets).

Er, sorry, I shouldn't run on. But that's why we wouldn't have thought ourselves especially adventurous in a tent. We'd have thought all that camping gear was high-tech. I remember when we got those little propane lanterns in Greece, how cool they were compared to kerosene lamps...

Ah, this is marvellously atmospheric and informative and transports me to another world, and written by one who really knows, and thankyou my friend. Please please, if you ever have a moment, write more about it??

And then could begin a related discussion on roots, and how do our roots affect our everyday life? Roots and home and belonging. Hmm

Heads off to think about it all again. Roots, and the routes that lead us away from, or back to, our roots. (Chris (spouse) just said . hmm. He is an uprooted Scottish Highlander. Prefers the idea of the 66. . Your descriptions here are very akin to the crofter's cottage he grew up in.

All very interesting indeed.

The people who built these shacks and cabins mostly had ancestors from Scotland, so I wouldn't be surprised at the spouse's reaction.

As him if he knows what a muley cow is...