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

It is testing self-discipline, yes, but I have some tools to manage it. I have been getting up at the usual time, so I was able to start work at 9am after doing the reverse commute and checking the news, and I finished work at 5.30pm (give or take a few minutes if video calling took longer than expected or not). After the evening reverse commute, I was ready to do the usual evening activities. However, every day did feel like Thursday so I couldn't quite say what day it was... Now it is the weekend, I get up later, eat different cereal and drink different tea so I know it is not Thursday

That is an excellent plan to start work earlier - you can get to your computer much more quickly than when you have to travel to the office so you can make the most of the extra hour

That is a great poignant start to the next segment in your Pixar series - captures moments for posterity so it will be an excellent resource in 2025...

Good luck with the food-finding mission Highly possible that you will find Simnel Cake before you find baked beans or pasta this month...

Glad you and your children are enjoying excursions I hope you can get out to cut the lawn - the weather was lovely here the last few days, but today it looks like rain, which would be typical for the weekend

* after checking the BBC explainer the other day, it did say that 'one form of exercise per day' does mean that only going outside and back inside once was the most important thing (although they didn't say why) so I changed my commute to stepping away from the computer and running round the house for some minutes.

My wife went food shopping today when I was at work/home and managed to find both pasta and baked beans again - although going round the shop took much longer than normal as Asda, where she went, actually had a queue. The smaller supermarkets I've been to have been dead.

The weekend was dry but very windy, but I managed to mow the lawn for the first time this year. The lawnmower is in the garage, which is quite a way from our garden, and it only has three wheels. It is supposed to have four, but it was a cheap lawnmower and we only have a little lawn. If we put a few extension leads together it just stretches to reach the garden.

It definitely has been a hectic day at work... Day went quick, though.

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Oh wow - that is great news about the pasta and baked beans

My shopping was successful-ish. No pasta or baked beans, but I got everything else I planned except I accidentally broke the bread rule. (I was shopping for me and mum, so I picked up 1500g of bread in 3 bags and when I got to the checkout 3 members of staff surrounded me saying that I couldn't have that - I could have 1600g of bread in 2 bags...) I managed to get it sorted out by explaining the logic, but it upset me out of all proportion... I had a lie down in a darkened room after that and felt a bit better, but I didn't sleep well and now I feel jetlagged as well because of the clocks changing

At least my day at work was pleasingly productive, so that made a difference. Well done to you for getting a good day's work done, too.

Glad you managed to mow the lawn as well I hope you're all doing OK even though you're 'driving only three wheels these days'.

Makes you wonder how you're supposed to shop 'for the vulnerable' if you're only allowed to buy two loaves of bread - breaking the loaves apart and handling them will only increase the risk. I also wonder why our local Co-op has a dedicated hour just for 'The Vulnerable and NHS workers' - if members of the NHS are the most likely to be exposed to the virus by the very nature of their job, surely the last people you'd want them mingling with are the most vulnerable?

It is all very strange... ANother really busy day at work. Most days of work involve getting about 3 days' worth of work, so the next day I start with 2 days work to do and get another three, and the following day I start with 4 days work to do and get another three...

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I know - I don't understand it at all The other option I thought of would be to do someone else's shopping, then go out and come back in again to do your own shopping, but that also increases the risk. Excellent point about how the dedicated hours shouldn't be combined, yes All very strange indeed, and I think all we can do is to try to do our best and not think too much about what the logic is(n't)... 'That way madness lies'...

That is a challenge with the workload situation... I reckon you'll have entered hyperdrive so you can get through 1.5 days' worth of work in one day, but even so you won't be bored any time soon at that rate My workload is much more manageable than that, but it is keeping me busier than usual so I'm not bored either.

The best thing to do is simply stay home as much as possible and hope for the best - even if everything is full of conflicting information such as try to avoid going shopping often, but don't stockpile. (I wish I had the room to be able to stockpile even if I wanted to...)

Hopefully workload will begin to calm down soon. I may even start to figure out how to access the systems I need to do my job - everything that involves certain tasks I've been leaving for another day, so they're starting to build up now.

The good news is that I got 'And Another Hexagonal Thing' in the post to listen to.

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Before I forget - did you see this in the news? http://twitter.com/h2g2_Guide/status/1242910793517223937 Dmitri asked me to mention it to you

Well said... Yes, the people with 8 years’ supply of toilet roll must have used it to build a second wall in their living rooms or something...

Good luck with accessing the systems for that batch of tasks . I had a bit of a technology blip today, that I arranged to ‘meet’ some colleagues in a virtual meeting room, and even showed one of the colleagues around the room in the morning, but when the meeting time arrived I was all alone in there Luckily I found them in a different room after a few minutes so I wasn’t very late, but it was weird

Glad you’ve got something interesting to listen to . Did you hear it on Radio 4 the other year? I ‘watched’ the second episode of the 2017 Dirk Gently on Saturday - not quite as gory as the first, but still a bit gruesome at times. Luckily iplayer has some cheesy programmes to watch in between

I managed to get my VPN access working, after two weeks of working from home! Apparently the problem was that my IP address had changed - I didn't know that that was something that IP addresses did and must confess that I had assumed that it was constant. Still, I should actually be able to do everything again now, and e-mails actually calmed down a bit this morning to enable me to actually do some catching up for once.

I did indeed listen to 'And Another Hexagonal Thing' on its original transmission, and do own the . I'll be honest in that I found it disappointing. I thought one of the key points of 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' was that Arthur Dent was the last surviving man, but now in this book they all go to visit the planet of the Irishmen. This rather detracts from Arthur's 'last surviving human' status. Had Eoin Coffer been desperate to include an Irish he could have easily added a bit to say they were from a parallel dimension or something, but no. The bits written by Douglas Adams are interesting and do spice it up, even if many are the bits that had been edited out of previous versions of the story.

I've not seen the recent 'Dirk Gently' - is that being shown on the telly, or did you see it online? I really enjoyed the BBC4 drama, it was a shame they couldn't afford to make more episodes.

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Oh wow - well done on getting into the VPN at last That is strange that the IP address changed - I thought they were constant, too, like a house address. That explains something that happened to me a few days ago, though - I got a message at the top of my browser window saying something along the lines of, 'This IP address has been traced for [something weird but non-threatening]' - I guessed it wasn't me that did that, so I closed the message and it went away.

Glad the e-mails calmed down for a bit so you can do some catching up - my work is still intense with video calls, but the collaboration is working well to get jobs done.

I got the recent 'Dirk Gently' on DVD for Christmas so I shall send it your way when I eventually finish with it. The BBC4 one was far superior, yes

Yes, the Hexagonal was disappointing to me, as well - as you say, the bits written by Douglas spice it up and made it interesting to listening to but, compared to the earlier series, it was unsatisfying. I like your idea of the parallel dimension to get around the plot hole Colfer created

A funny day today - a Head of School complained about the options process without understanding it at all because they got confused with the timetable system, so there wasn't a problem after all So I didn't get to do as much other stuff as I'd hoped. No video calls today, just doing some catching-up/treading water stuff today...

The Hexagonal Phase also suffered from having more voices where the original voice artist was no longer able to do it, the ending was weaker than the end of the previous series and Ford didn't really do anything so didn't have much of a purpose, I thought. It also was a much slower story - if you hear the Primary Phase the story keeps changing and reinventing itself at a hectic pace, this just isn't the same...

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Ah, that is annoying that you had to spend time sorting out a problem that wasn't a problem... I hope you're getting on OK so far today. I feel quite because I slept better at the weekend, and enjoyed walks in the warm, breezy fresh air. I had a bit better time in the supermarket, too - people drifted too close for comfort at times, but the shelves were mostly well-stocked (except for the pasta aisle) so I even got toilet paper.

Yes, Hexagonal was definitely slow-paced - I heard the Primary Phase first, a couple of years before Hexagonal, and then I listened to the Secondary Phase straight after that and could really tell the difference...

Definitely difficult for authors to imitate someone else's style, as we know with Sebastian Foulkes, John Gardner, etc... Seems someone else is having a go at the moment, too! A87977966

Thanks for the link there, I went along and hopefully we'll be able to get that in the right place. Nothing wrong with enthusiasm. It's been wet this morning - I had hoped to be able to sit outside this morning in the garden, but it was damp so I didn't. I did finally get the mouse we ordered a week ago, so hopefully I won't get the pains in the wrist again. I stopped drawing entirely last week because of it (I've drawn four or five more pages now but am seeing if I attract more interest with one page a day rather than four or five pages uploaded on a Monday and nothing else the rest of the week).

The news reports of crowded parks etc seems very unlike my experience here, but then I suppose it is inevitable in central London as where else is there for people to go if there's flats everywhere and no gardens?

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That thread is spot on - Bluebottle replying to Ned Seagoon

Wow, that isn't good about your wrist - the new mouse should help indeed That is a good idea to put one page at a time on - gets around the weirdness that in batches it only allows people to 'like' the whole album in the newsfeed, whereas individual images are able to be 'like'd directly

Yesterday I worked on a project by myself, which made a change from videoconferencing, but today I was back online Still productive, though. It is a lovely warm bright evening here, so I enjoyed a long walk. I hope you have been able to get out into the garden today.

Very true that it is different in London where gardens are not common - most of my neighbours here have gardens that they can make the most of, so the local park is quiet. Your cartoon about people queueing patiently outside the supermarket followed by a free-for-all inside is very like my experience here, too.

It hasn't been so bad so far this week, and with two 4-day weeks in a row it should be getting more rest. Not sure how much appeal the running picture has overall, though... Not as universal a tale as the supermarket experience by any means.

I did get to go into the garden for a video conference this morning. Lots of bird sond drowning out the words of my overall manager

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Yes, 4 day weeks are good for resting

That's good that you were able to do videoconferencing in the garden My videoconferences feature the sound of tractors, and a nearby dog that likes to pretend to attack every dog that goes past my front garden, but I get to enjoy a few notes of other people's music at the same time

I had a tough day today, as home tech let me down just a tad... I finished the project I was working on on Monday, but decided to have lunch before sending it to my boss, so I could check the calculations one more time in the afternoon. When I returned to the computer, the project file had gone I tried everything to find it, as I hoped there would be a residue from every time I saved the file, but it turned out it had all been eaten when a database connection failed without me realising... Luckily I remembered most of what I had done, so I managed to recreate the whole thing from scratch this afternoon, but that was not fun...

Apart from that, it was another lovely evening so I enjoyed a walk accompanied with plenty of birdsong and then I enjoyed some h2g2 reading I hope your day went well

We had a lot of birdsong and there was a bit of barking from next door's , but I think it had been teased by our walking along the top of the fence out of its reach again. I'm definitely getting to spend a lot more time with at the moment.

Sadly my daughter's not been at all happy today as she has toothache again. All the appointments we'd had to solve the problem once and for all that had been booked for late March, throughout April and the final one in May have, of course, been cancelled and all dentists shut, so it appears that toothache is something we'll just have to put up with. We did finally find somewhere selling paracetamol today, though not one she is happy to take because of the taste. It isn't helped by her not sleeping well lately.

Oh well, four day week this and next so I dread to think how full the inbox will be on Tuesday morning... Academic staff and students don't seem to believe in the existence of working hours.

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Ah, yes I saw your wife's photo of on the fence

Sorry to hear that about your daughter - very unfortunate that the appointments had to be cancelled Glad you were able to get some paracetamol, and hopefully it will help your daughter to sleep better if she can manage to take it...

Sorry your inbox is likely to be extra full on Tuesday... Ours are much more well-behaved - there are the odd few e-mails sent over a weekend, but when it is a bank holiday things quieten down well. Lots of people are taking annual leave this week and next week as well, so that makes a difference. Good luck with it all

What do you snack on during Lent, if you don't mind me asking? I trust you have a nice Easter Egg lined up for Monday I got an Easter Egg for Christmas (a large Kinder Egg) but as Easter is quite late this year I actually managed to finish it before now (helped by needing the energy for videoconferencing...) so I shall hopefully treat myself to an Easter Easter Egg when I next go food shopping

I hope you all have a good long weekend, and enjoy the break from work

The photo of on the fence was on the fence on the other side of the garden, but you get the idea

Today has been spent trying to get NHS' 111 service to agree to let us get some more medicine for our daughter - it looks like we will now be able to tomorrow, though from a pharmacy 10 miles away.

I don't think anyone in our team is off at the moment, other than off from illness and maternity at any rate. I think theoretically I have 25 days left to take between now and August, but if they want courses to be ready for students to start in September I don't see how I'll get a chance to take any time off. There's also been lots of contradictory advice on whether or not we're allowed to carry holiday over into the next holiday period.

Today was spent carrying my wife's 30-year collection of film magazines out of the loft as she's planning on throwing them away. How she's actually going to throw them away seems yet to be determined. It is easier said than done. Especially as the box broke when I was on the ladder and they all fell on top of me... I only went up to the loft to find my copy of 'The Masque of the Red Death' in any case.

What do I snack on during Lent? Oh, the usual - a lot of grapes, hot cross buns/fruit loaf. I've given up biscuits and define a 'biscuit' as being a -dunkable sweet snack, so includes Jaffa Cakes (people do dunk them, though I prefer the , approach myself) and shortbread, but savoury snacks such as crackers and mini Cheddars are acceptable. And I've also eaten an occasional Bakewell.

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