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

This has been stolen from Game Addicts (A1041625), hence the (part II). .

The idea is to make a conversation where the next poster has to out-do the previous one in poverty, as in one of the Python sketches. For example..

'When I were a lad we had to work don t' pit for 12 hours a day'

was followed by;

'Well I had to work for 14 hours a day, without even the likes of a candle.'

and then,

'I had to work for 16 hours a day without a candle or a budgie'


and so on and so forth...

So to start,
I had to sweep the streets..

Aha! The Four Yorkshiremen Sketch

When I were lad we had to pay to work down pit for 25 hours a day a we got home we had a good thrasing with the belt before we went to bed, only it weren't a bed it were a shoe box it midddle o' road!

Only a belt? I was thrashed by a pointed stick. No shoe box for the likes of me, I had t'shelter under crisp packet by railway line and that was shared with my brothers and pet rat.

A railway line and pet rat, you were pampered, I recall a pillow of sharp flint, and half a lump of coal to curl round. And that was only after sweeping the streets at night so I couldn't be seen, and working the pit by day.

I couldn't so much as afford half a lump of coal. I was working down pit 24 hours a day and worked overtime sweeping streets.

Streets?!! Luxuary! After payin' to work down pit for 54 hours aday 9 days a week and gettin a good thrashing on arrival home I 'd have to go out into peet-bog by side of dirt track for my bath a then scrub it clean after!!!

Scrub? You mean you actually had a brush! All I got was a toothpick to clean the muddy streets with, and that was after working in pit for 19 days a fortnight!

Muddy streets! Why when I were a lad we had to move manure off of muddy track withg our teeth!

Pah! I had to clean the sewers with a tea spoon!

Sewers was where I had to hunt for my lunch!

Lunch? You were a luck one. I was lucky if I got half a shoe lace to nibble on, and that had to be found first in the village pond which had been used for the last four years as a dump for kitchen refuse.

A pond? Well it might just as well have been a silver platter, me, I had to eat the little bits of fluff from a wild rat which I had to hunt down the garbage pile where I worked from dawn til 6 dawns later cleaning it with a piece of dental floss.

You lot dont know you're born!
I used to live in Newton Aycliffe!

Luxery! We used to dream of living in Newton Aycliffe. When I were a lad, we used to live in a lump of granite, have to chissel our way out in the morning, with a broken tooth pick, and work 25 hours a day, down mine, day in day out, and pay mine owner sixpence for priviledge of working, and when we got home, our parents would beat us with iron bars and kill us, before cutting us into slices with bread knife, and dancing the fandango on our graves.... And you try telling the kids of today, and they won't believe you...

No they won't!

No, they won't... You try to tell them, how, when I was a lad, we used to live inside the reactor core of a nuclear powerstation, get up, 5 in the morning, five minutes before we went to bed, lick clean the interour of the reactor, before we were allowed to be dropped on our heads outside, and have to walk five thousand miles, just to get enough sand to full our pockets, easy, easy life these kids of today...

Ohh what I wouldn't have given for a nuclear power plant!
When I was a lad I lived in inside of a coal plant chimney which I had to clean with my tounge and a skunk as foreman right before my 7000 miles walk to my other job, cleaning out a minefield. And then 7000 miles back home where I got to eat some my own callus if I was lucky, and then I went to sleep in my bed which was made out of soot and a single nine inch nail as a pillow!

Absolute luxory, Soot, and chimneys, we used to dream of soot and chimneys, when I was a lad, we were forced to wear shell suits listen to 'Wham, and if We were lucky we'd be allowed to walk the 5,000 miles on a tightrope to the field where we would steal grass for food to feed the cattle that we had to rear for the land owner, and if we were real lucky, the farmer would shoot us with his world war II machine gun...

Oh we would have given all we had to be shot with a World War II machine gun, but we didn't have anything to give. We had to make do with being thrown by trebuchet against a wall embedded with rusty spikes. If we were lucky there would be someone pouring boiling oil down the wall at the time.

Boiling Oil! In My Dreams, Oh if only.... but that would've cured my dandruff and I would've starved to death, and as for working down't mine, envious? Me? I should cocoa, dark dank solitude? I wish....... You should try driving a Bus, day in day out. None of that namby pamby European driving rules for US! Oh No! Good old fashioned British Regs' for US.... Hemeroids? YOU HAVE NO IDEA..... down mines in deed.... poofs!