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

A pint glass is filled with half a pint of milk.

An optimist looks at the glass and says 'why, it is half full'

A pessimist looks at the glass and says 'but it is half empty'

I look at the glass and say 'it is sour'










This is wholesale theft. Don't believe the hype.

Two men look out of their prison cells
One sees only the bars on the window
The other man sees stars

I say 'Who hit you?You could make a formal complaint through the proper channels you know.'



From 'Complain its your birthright'copyright C.Mitchell 2002.
(Aged 7 1/2)

Three coins in a fountain, each on seeking happiness.

I say 'what the f**k? Coins? Seeking happiness? You must be mental, that makes no sense whatsoever.'

You can't copywright on h2g2 can you?!

Copywright? I wouldn't have a clue 'bout that. Are you still organising your elastic time wotsit?

Yes I keep setting up a 'testbed' but it needs banners and pictures they haven't got in the .gif picture thingy.Also I can't do any animation. I say copywright everything just in case..even things you haven't thought of yet.

test? bed? testbed? spetdeb? bettsed? what? it's all foreign to me.

I only just found out you can get the internet on computers these days. One day you'll be able to watch movies on the things, who knows! I'm going to sell the fridge when I get home, I reckon the old 'puter in the corner can do the job even better.

Sarah and Jane have two packets of sweets each containing 12 sweets. If Sarah is diabetic and Jane id dyslexic how much change would they get from 7 euros.Calculate the arrival time of the ambulance using the Julian calendar.

Ah, that's a trick question. Sarah is clearly unable to buy sweets as she is on remand for breaking into a zoo, whilst Jane is too busy for sweets. She was still born.

oh you're back are you? I've been having a think about wether there was a Dick as well as a Fanny in the Magic Faraway Tree.

This is all turning a little Carry On in here now, cue cries of 'infamy, infamy, they've all got it in for me...', some raucous chuckles and a leather-faced pug of an old South African hanging around with Bernard Bresslaw pretending to be youn men 'cor look at them birds Sid!'

Have you never read any Enid Blyton.Were your parents the type to ban books of hers in a 'right on they don't recommend them in the library'sort of way. I read everything the good woman ever wrote and look where I am today.I rest my case.

Of course! The people who didn't read Blyton are the ones hanging out in Halfords car parks these days. I still have the audio tapes of The Famous Five where they stop the smugglers. I can vividly remember the trap door and pantomime cow to this day, and the local lad (comes across as a bit Cornish) who Timmy pooh-poohs away. Oh, grand days.

I was and still am a big fan of the big lady though, Richmal Crompton. I've got about 60 of her books and all of the Kenneth Williams tapes, not Martin 'shi**y-chin' Jarvis. Grrr. Might read them again some day, maybe when I have finished the 2 I'm reading at the moment and the 7 I have lined up after that.

Martin Jarvis owns every radio studio in the land..if you want to do any audio recording of any book he has to look at it first and see if he can do it better.
Richmal was a fine woman.Many years ago 'William' was asunday afternoon tea-time series.That was when we all lived with my gradmother so it must have been1977. Sadly it was the break Bonnie Langford needed....But I expect someone as odd as you LIKES her.

Bonnie Langford! Phwoar, I wouldn't. She is quite the most hateful face and voice which is (fortunately) not getting much airtime these days. Anyone or anything that looks the part and or sings the songs from Annie should have been culled with the hoven creatures of foot and mouth in my own humble opinion.

I've seen the series you mention during my younger years and the mid 90s one they made as well.

I prefer the really old black and white films of it myself, there's something about the books that demands a stiff-upper-lipped young wartime whippersnapper to play the role, rather than stage-school brat who can do a passable impression of the upper-middle classes.

My favourie period for childrens books is the thirties and forties.One of my favourites is 'The Family from One End Street' I love most of what Noel Streatfield wrote and I'm very fond of books like'When Marnie was there' .When I was a kid growing up in Australia we had a book club running through the school...a lot of the books were American but there was some excellent stuff.There is a website dedicated to people who still collect and read childrens books but I've never looked at it .

I remember reading all the Pirate books at infants school with Captains Bluebeard, Yellowbeard and Redbeard. I always loved them. I read the entire school reading list including juniors in 2 years and was ahead of the kids who were 4 years above me. I stopped reading then because they had no more to offer me and completely neglected reading for fun for far too many years.

Apart from an occasional flirtation with books like Stephen King when I was about 12 years old or some other tat I stopped reading until about 3 years ago when I bought 1984 at random and haven't really stopped since then.

i read constantly.At eight I had a reading age of a fifteen year old.At eleven in cornwall I read abridged versions of all the classics and caused my fairly sever myopia by readin in bed by the light coming from the hallway.And then I stopped in my late teens.I read my old books these days in the same way as you watch favourie films because they are a constant. I do read new books but I've never liked chick lit.It has no relevance to my life which proves its crap.What relevance per example could 'just William' have to your life, good writing is one of lifes pleasures. ...Blimey maybe I could write for the Gaurdian.

William Brown got into all manner of scrapes which I projected myself into. It's all a lovely fantasy land which helps to train the imagination to work a little better. I credit my childhood reading for my habit of going off on a tangent and thinking things other people cannot even comprehend. Well that and the herb.

i credit my ability to live in many worlds at once functioning adequately in most of them and sometimes even surpassing myself in others to the fact that I am cleverer than almost everyone else I know.The difficulty comes when I am alternating between worlds then even a simple questiom like 'Have you seen my school-bag'can fuse my multi -tasking function.