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

I've just been browsing a book of Alexander Pope's poetry. My lecturer at university described him as a mysogynistic grumpy old sod (or words to that effect); yet his poems show respect for most of his female acquaintances, and a general sense of fun. If he was reclusive, who can blame him, considering that women didn't fancy him, ever? Poor bloke had the mind of a genius and the body of a hunchbacked dwarf. Adolescence must have been hell.

He threw all his energy into his creativity. Not only was he a prolific and searingly funny poet, but he designed his own house and worked hard to make his gardens into a place of beauty where people could stroll and dream; but when a friend sent a letter to congratulate him on their completion, he wrote back to say that, without love, it all meant nothing:

Ah friend, 'tis true--this truth you lovers know--
In vain my structures rise, my gardens grow,
In vain fair Thames reflects the double scenes
Of hanging mountains, and of sloping greens:
Joy lives not here; to happier seats it flies,
And only dwells where Wortley casts her eyes.

What are the gay parterre, the chequer'd shade,
The morning bower, the ev'ning colonnade,
But soft recesses of uneasy minds,
To sigh unheard in, to the passing winds?

So the struck deer in some sequester'd part
Lies down to die, an arrow in his heart;
There, stretch'd unseen in coverts hid from day,
Bleeds drop by drop, and pants his life away.

Though he was starved of romance, Pope did have one beloved companion, and that was a dog called Bounce. She was being looked after by Lord Orrery when she died. Pope was gutted by the news. He wrote:

Ah Bounce! ah gentle Beast! why wouldst thou dye,
When thou had'st Meat enough, and Orrery?

They were the last lines he ever wrote. He died shortly afterwards.

Buncha philistines.

It's rather "grandfather's clock" - especially with the name of the lord involved.

never read any Pope
he did make a lecherous appearance in 'Fanny' by Erica Jong

Well, you've read some now.

Is 'Fanny' a book?

Is an Orrery a kind of clock?

> "Is an Orrery a kind of clock?"

Yes, a special celestial one. It's particularly useful for imagining travelling in time and space (by fast winding it forwards or backwards and looking from a different direction).

Oh, yes! I saw one on an antiques programme: it had a windy handle to turn the planets and everything. It was nifty: a simple mechanism with a complex result. I considered trying to make one for Gothly's birthday, but then I forgot about it. Gothly got some fancy soap and a DVD of 2001 instead.

Fanny is a book
Pope is 1 of many to make attacks on the heroines virtue, never very secure in the first place

> "but then I forgot about it"

Well now that you've remembered you can make it for another one ... or just forget again.

Fanny: no connection with Fanny Hill? Poor Pope, I'm sure he doesn't deserve such slander!

I can't remember how the orrery was made now. Something to do with wooden discs in the base. I'll have to find some instructions or something. If I remember. And get round to it.

I think Erica Jong mean't her novel as a pastiche of that style of novel

I've tried several times to read Fanny Hill. It's supposed to be humorously titillating, but it's actually mind-numbingly boring. Even I can write sexier stuff than that. My brother once had an illustrated version, but even that wasn't worth paying actual money for.

Sounds like Erica Jong has at least managed to be entertaining.

I just noticed my typo.

Quite like Erica Jong
Can't remember what her 'famous' book was now
I often find pastiches better than the original
Read a couple of excellent novels by Charles Palliser written in a sort of Wilkie Collins style
Inspired me to read his classic, 'The Moonstone'
Yedious in the extreme

Tedious even

She wrote Fear of Flying, didn't she?

yes
good book too

While we're on the subject of boring books, Middlemarch made me want to chew my own leg off. George Eliot famously said that she'd written it straight off, without making any alterations whatsoever--and I tell you what, it looks like it. What a pile of unutterably boring, monotonous drivel. How anyone can say they published their first draft like that's a *good* thing, I do not know.

I forgot to ask you earlier. If you are looking through abstruse sources of things natural-philosophical, trying to find parts or plans for orrerries; you might also stumble across some for Archimidean solids. Let me know if you do because it would amuse Peirigill if I made or got him some for birthday or xmas or something.



Sloggging my way through Marvyn Peake. There might be a fire in about 75 pages or so!

Archimedean solids are easy. My website has information on that, including diagrams of how to get them from pattern grids (the software for which is also provided on site). I made the Platonic set as soft toys for a couple of babies - one of whom shows distinctly mathematical tendencies (though I suspect that's more the result of genetics than merely early learning).