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

I've never heard that before!! I want to know what it means too. Is it the same as "All systems go"?

Either it means queegle has some very strange friends, or else he/she picked up a dictionary to find a strange phrase, and couldn't be bothered reading very far.

I have to go away next week so it will take my about three hours to read all the postings to catch up when I get home!!!! Youd better try not to talk too much!!

No, it was Rincewind who was a Wizzard. His hat said so.

As I remember he wasn't a very good wizzard though...

A chap I work for was referring to a problem we had yesterday, he said "all systems are aardvark" said goodbye and put the phone down, he is very welsh and comes out with some odd ones now and then, but this has us puzzled! I'm thinking it's all number 1 ie. A-OK type of thing...???

Along the lines of weird phrases that I have heard which I just assumed people made up i.e. "That'll be the Womble"
Of course it may just have been a case of his mouth running ahead of his brain.

It means the same as 'always know whats least expected most'. Very little to anyone.
So Wiltshire, Dorset, Gloucestershire and Yorkshire all lay claim to that mobile repast, the domestic swine (no, not ones spouse)?
Why is it that only Norfolk lays claim to Turkeys?

Munchkin, you gave yourself the answer..."his brain" a contradiction in terms.

Percy, you mean those scrawny necked things with a death wish? Who else would want to? Besides I thought they laid eggs not claims.

(Sorry, but its Friday afternoon!)

What does being drunk have to do with rats bottoms? rat-arsed?

It took two reads to make sure that the county of Norfolk hadn't laid claim to Turkey (the country).

Aha! Back on topic. Now for some truly British and largely incomprehensible metaphors:

Rat-arsed (thankyou Pheroneus)
Drunk as a Lord
Pissed as a newt (yes, I know we have done that one)
Brahms and Liszt
Three sheets to the wind
One over the eight
Three parts cut

Hic

I've just been tipped off by a 'friend' that my species is being taken in vain !!

And before anyone asks, I've got fur and not hair !

Go with the flow, orinoco!

The only Enid Blyton I enjoyed(and my two kids)was the Faraway Tree which was perhaps the only Enid Blyton that didn't preach.I preffered A.A.Milne(undisneyfied),Lewis Carroll,Kenneth Graham.My sister being 8 years older and working on a Saturday on a bookshop saw to it that I got some decent reading material.She was also responsible for seeing to it that I got some good sex education instead of relying on parental supervision and provided some reasonable literature about it.
Even though I'm now 48 she still is mothering me-it's great!

If you don't get it with the dog's this-that-and-the-other, have you ever even considered how confusing cricket is?

You have two teams of 11 players. At the start of the game team A are 'in' and always have two men in at any one time - by in I mean they are actually out on the pitch. Teams B try to get the men of team A out - to send them inside and as they do more men from team A come in to take their place. After team B have got all the men in team A out they go in and team A try to get them out. After both sides have had turns of being in and out then a winner is declared. In Test match cricket, they do this twice, except that sometimes a team may be so good that they dont have to come out to go in again so the other team can try to get them out. But that doesn't happen very often.

I understand all that it just the rules I don't understand and the scoring system.I also don't understand why my husband watches the cricket with the sound off and the radio on.It means that noone can even use headphones to listen to music for the entire day or watch anything else on television again for most of the day.

I suspect that your hubby is, like me, "of a certain age" i.e a child of the radio age: Toytown, Jennings and all that.
The trouble with TV is that the commentators tend to talk about what you can actually see, so you don't need to hear what you can see for yourself. The radio folk are not working with the same constraints and can elaborate and personalise matters.
You don't understand the rules? (Actually they are "Laws".) Channel 4, bless 'em, have instituted some changes to benefit poor deprived souls like yourself - and even my wife is beginning to show an interest. If you can't persuade your team adviser to turn up the TV sound (Share and Enjoy )see if the set has got a socket for an earpiece. You could then listen to the points being explained in a fair amount of detail. Might make a difference.

After 26 years of marriage which began with a honeymoon weekend spent at the Oval there is absolutely no chance of such an occurrence.I think I have been as tolerant as any spouse can be over this.

If you don't understand the laws, there is a very (un)helpful forum somewhere round here called the Rules Of Cricket, started by an american asking what it was all about. I think he's got some understanding now after about a year talking around the subject - bit like this forum really.

I would guess that "the dog's bollocks [bollox]" refers to the canine's flexible ability to, well, you know.

And as dogs have a tendency to like doing this then "the dogs bollocks" are a worthy item indeed. However to refer to something as "bollocks" would be derogatory, as they are "testicles", which I think everyone can agree as being unattractive.

To be a "dog", would be normally refering to a female who was less than attractive (English colloquism for you). Perhaps this is related to the term "bitch"?

To make a "dog's breakfast" of something is to make a mess of it, as the dog's breakfast is not normally a pretty sight.

And the "dog's business" would be when a canine excretes - being something of primary interest to the dog rather than its owner.

I hope that makes things crystal clear and bristol fashion.