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

What's the story?

You're walking along the street, and you see random bits and pieces of discarded clothing. I can understand someone having their gloves in a pocket, and accidentally losing on. But a sock? A pair of boxers? Or, in today's case, a shoe, worn, but in perfectly good nick?

Was someone bundled into a car and abducted, and just before they slammed the door shut, he had the presence of mind to jiggle one shoe off for forensics to find?

Or was he just on his way to work when one shoe fell off, whereupon he shrugged and said "Oh shit, I'll just have to leave it there or I'm gonna be late!" ?

Or is it some kind of code that burglars, vampires or MI6 use to communicate with one another in public?

What is your story, little lost brogue?

Its a conspiracy. of epic proportions.

We saw a lone shoe, last week, in the village where William lives.... No coincidence, I suspect, this follows on from the mystory of the subway shoe collection, near my Father; four shoes; brand new, 2 pairs, placed, side by side, on top of a really high wall on the subway, under the rail line.... as weeks go by, the shoes have slowely reduced in number..... Its a mystory, for sure....

Keep an eye out for renegade clothing, everyone. If we bring our collective minds to bear on this one, I am sure we can discover great things. There may be a Nobel prize in it if we can sort this out!

I have often wondered about the One Shoe Phenomenon. Often driving down the Autobahn there will be a solitary shoe on the hard shoulder. Or, worse, near the central reservation. How do they get there? Is it a sign? if so, what of?

it seems to be more widespread than I thought!

I like that joke by Rhod Gilbert about renegade shoes on the hard shoulder of motorways - something to do with Welsh people going to London and getting a sun-dried tomato stuck to their foot, so the only way to get rid of the contamination on the way home is to throw the shoe out of the car window

It's part of Britain's tradition, as described by Flanders and Swann:



"The Society for Putting
Broken Bedsteads into Ponds
Has another solemn purpose to fulfil;
On our coastal sands and beaches
Or where waving willow wands
Mark the borders of a river, stream or rill,
You'll always find a single laceless left-hand leather boot:
A bootless British river bank's a shock.
We leave them there at midnight;
You can track a member's route,
By the alternating prints of boot and sock."

It was very cool, oo, quite a few years ago now; talking of river banks, when they dredged the broads/river near my Father's.... all the silt and mud, piled up on the bank, and all the rubbish, one could find in it... a lot seemed to be circa the 1920s, lots of old glass bottles people had obviously just thrown into the water, and the occaional almost completely rotted to nothing shoe too ana supprising amount of mops.... which I assume had been lost overboard, and sunk (though a lot of them were rather more recent than the 20s) and, of course, the strange, sacred, carved item, I found which... sadly... I now realise, I have no idea where It is... it was a kinda weird.... thing... sort of long... and flat... and carved... and... weird... mind, not as weird as the tiny little gravestone, on the opposite bank, of a little island, in the middle of the broad on rat island... I've an old pair of shoes I shoudl get rid of.... maybe I should decorate two roadsides, with each half of the pair

I can never hear Flanders and Swann without thinking of Monty Python.

" You can wr-r-rap it up in r-ribbons, you can put it in a sock..."