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

I didn't even realize Wimpy was in other countries too! Over here it was always the 'cheap' place to go for burgers and other unhealthy food-like products. McDonalds only came along a few years ago. Now why I've eaten at Wimpy's many times, I have not yet had a single thing from McDonalds!

I didn't realise they were in South Africa!

I believe Wimpy was the first restaurant chain to be popular in the UK, spreading across in the 1950s, before McDonalds and Burger King. Unlike those places, if you ate dinner in the restaurant you'd get cutlery and plates. I cutlery and plates, and thought the food tasted better than McDonald's, so if I had a choice I know where I'd go. They had a few at motorway services too, including 'Wimpy Chicken' dedicated to just doing friend chicken. But sadly almost all Wimpys in the UK have closed within the last decade, though there is one in Southsea next to the hovercraft terminal.

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A brain the size of a peanut?

I was going to say that peanuts did not exist when the dinosaurs were alive -- until I saw this link:

http://www.botany.one/2013/10/repetitive-component-peanut-genome/

55 million years of evolution since the peanut branch of the legume family diverged from the other(s). Way too complicated for me.

I think Camarasaurus and Maiasaura actually had brains rather larger than that! Perhaps tennis-ball sized … but I don't have accurate data on that.

As for peanuts … it's only the part of the legume family that they belong to, that has diverged from the others about 55 million years ago. This section, the Dalbergiae, contains oodles of species other than peanuts, most of them actually being more 'conventional' trees, shrubs and climbers. So I've no idea how old the peanut plant itself is …

I think Wimpy is now primarily a South African franchise. There's a Wimpy in the Savannah shopping centre, within walking distance from where I live. When my mom was dying from cancer, we had a little ritual. We would go in the early afternoon to the Wimpy in the Cycad Centre (another shopping centre just a tad further away) and she'd eat, for lunch, a meal from the breakfast menu with bacon and eggs. It was pretty much the only kind of 'food' that she was willing and able to ingest. She still lost a shocking amount of bodyweight in her final months ...

I'm afraid that this story lost all touch with reality back on page 7 when it portrayed what is in real life clearly a KX telephone kiosk as a K6 phone box. It's all been downhill since then:




I'm still not convinced that politicians have a brain larger than a peanut, let alone a

Do the Wimpys in South Africa have the same logo? Sorry to hear about your mom but it sounds like you had good times together.

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The size of the brain is less important than how much of it is really useful.

I think you're right Paulh. I don't think ancient critters with their smaller brains were really much stupider than our modern thingies …

Thinking more about it, tennis ball is too big … maybe more like a table tennis ball.

And for politicians, even dinosaurian ones, all bets are off!

Yes Bluebottle Wimpy SA's logo looks just like the one in the comic!

I like the mention of the Floating Bridge "Having no sense of direction, distance or scale"

Excellent depiction of Sandown Pier - I can visualise that well from when I visited

How close to the Pier did you get when you were in Sandown? I gather your enthusiasm for the esplanade was unfortunately, shall we say 'curbed', by the pavement height.

As for the Floating Bridge designers – well, it is a proven technology. Floating bridges have operated that route without problem between 1859 and 2017. A few years ago it was agreed a new one would cost £3½ million, they were given the £3½ million– and what was built has, since being installed in early 2017, cost an extra £4 million or so in repairs and being out of service and - two and a half years after coming into service and after numerous repair attempts - still scrapes a 33.25% reliability rating for September 2019. What else can be concluded other than the designers had no sense of direction, distance or scale?

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"I gather your enthusiasm for the esplanade was unfortunately, shall we say 'curbed', by the pavement height. "

It was rather, but I did get to (the outside of) the Pier eventually - while I was waiting for a taxi I sat underneath where the Wimpy logo would have been had the Wimpy been there

"What else can be concluded other than the designers had no sense of direction, distance or scale?" - Indeed!

Some designers have much to atone for.

You can see a photo of the pier here: http://h2g2.com/h2g2/blobs/Sandown_Pier_promo.JPG
But I can't remember – or work out – whether I took that when Wimpy was still there or not…

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Beautiful photo. You should work for the tourist board.

That wood be a good idea.

I have a cousin who visited a friend dying of cancer and upon seeing her, she burst into tears because of the shock at the living skeleton she had become, so I can understand the situation. Probably,if you were with her a lot of the time, the change would have appeared gradual, rather than drastic.

Good point.

My mom didn't completely make it to the living skeleton stage, but she lost almost half of her bodyweight. It happened quite fast, so it was shocking to me.

Sorry to hear that.

The most horrific thing that happened to me was working in a geriatric hospital. It was like being in a horror film.

My mother died in one nursing home. Six years later, my father died in a different one. I'm not fond of nursing homes, though the best ones have some very dedicated staff and pleasant surroundings.

My wife's mother and one of her aunties were in nursing homes. Geriatric hospitals are much worse places.The auntie escaped out the window and her daughters put her in because she was getting paranoid. The wife's mother liked me visiting. When one of the other female residents started talking to me, she told her to push off, he's here to see me not you. The patients in the geriatric wing couldn't communicate at all