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

With the news dwelling on my old school building, I've unsurprisingly been thinking about what school was like when I was young, and how it has changed. Leaving aside the fact that schools have more computers now (there was a Commodore PET at my Primary School that I never actually saw switched on. At Middle School there were three or four BBCs the staff used to demonstrate things and at High School there were some Acorn Archimedes that we were occasionally allowed to touch, as well as several BBCs) I think the biggest change is Geography.

I remember the first day of the new school year – we had a newly qualified Geography teacher who was so full of enthusiasm. He'd put up brand-new world maps around the room, had a brand-new globe on his desk and we had brand new text books too. They were all completely obsolete – the had changed completely and forever.

One week East and West Germany were merging together, the next Czechoslovakia was split in two to become Slovakia and the Czech Republic. New previously unknown European countries were popping up out of the blue non-stop, like Latvia, Lithuania and the one everyone hoped would swap its name with Lichtenstein but was actually Estonia. Yugoslavia became Serbia and Montenegro, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia. Other countries like Albania, Hungary and Bulgaria changed their names from 'People's Republic of' to 'Republic of'.

Where once there was the USSR suddenly there were new names to learn – some seemingly chosen from grabbing a handful of letters from a scrabble bag. Moldova, Ukraine, Belaris, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan. Can you name three cities in Russia? Our geography teacher couldn't – they were constantly changing names from Lenigrad and Stalingrad.

Africa too was getting in on the act with Namibia and Eritra springing up all of a sudden.

Our homework each week was to try and keep up of all these new countries that were blossoming up all around on a daily basis.

The world was very much a changing place full of possibilities – the Cold War was ending, the Iron Curtain collapsing and a huge chunk of Blackgang Chine fell into the sea. We were told that all fossil fuels on would definitely be gone by the end of the 1990s, so we'd better make the most of the Isle of Wight Steam Railway while we could.

This century all you've had so far is South Sudan's split from Sudan in 2011 – it isn't the same. They haven't even put any thought into the new name. (True So-Called IS made a land-grab dash, but that doesn't count.)

Things might change though – I've been following the situation in Catalonia with great interest. As I'm very much in favour of asserting local identity my sympathy was on the Catalan side to begin with, but the images of jackbooted policemen battering elderly women for the crime of trying to vote are scandalous. I hope the situation is resolved with Spain apologising, allowing a full and proper election and then moving on from there. After all, according to Article 21 (3) of the United Nation's 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights 'The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.' Nothing about battering grey-haired grannies to the ground.

If nothing else, it'll give my kids something to learn about at school.

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That's really interesting - my school geography lessons avoided all that completely by focusing on a park a couple of miles away, that had paths, a meadow, a river and trees, then the lessons went to South America after a brief stop in West Africa...

This century, I'm most aware of the Ossetia issue, which linked in with the Abkhazia issue in the area around Georgia, but that didn't fully result in the creation of new countries... It would have been much better there to have a referendum, rather than involving military power, but violence against grannies is not a solution either way...

I try to do better these days at finding places on a map. My UK geography is improved since I got a railcard, but there are still gaps in my knowledge. My world geography is improved thanks to h2g2 - for example, I know much more about the USA than I used to and I can visualise Scandinavia better, too

Yesterday I found out that 'Kyrgyz' means 'we are forty'.

I just thought you'd want to know that...

We didn't study South America or West Africa – just kept trying to learn about Europe, which was quite difficult 'cos it seemed to be changing on a weekly basis.

I've not seen much about the war/uneasy truce in Georgia on the news for a while. I wonder whether Donald Trump is going to be campaigning for Puerto Rico to become either a full US State or an independent nation – somehow I don't see it... Another possible new country to be founded is the establishment of a 'Kurdistan', possibly crossing the borders of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran – not that anyone in power likes that idea…

But it is fascinating how groups of people become nations.

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