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

"Can I get in before paulh and ask if they were open-toad sandals?"

yes, you can, icy.

The subject line sounds like something Wesley Tofflemeister Flimby would have come up with.

UXB?

No idea what this is, sorry.

Google says unexploded bomb...?

Maybe UXB is a video of a TV series about an unexploded British band from the midlands.

I'm guessing he was in the police. Clearly it's standard procedure to move your unexploded ordnance to the heart of the city.

Despite plenty of warning, early February 2002 was such a moment. I became a grand-father ! What? How ? . . . All of the usual.

And then somewhat bigger than that - 16 years and one week later . . . That young lad named Nick made me a great-grand-father. Seriously, at my age, this?

Best place for it, just the opposite of what the terrorists would expect and therefore exactly the best plan.


Meeeeeeeeeh!

/GenreralMelchett impression

You think you've got problems. I have 2 grandchildren without ever having been a parent.

Work that one out!


(they might just be biologically related to my wife)

Hi Orcus you are correct about the UXB

I hope there isn't an unexploded bomb in Uxbridge.

There´s a place and a time with a few wtf moments.

When I was a teenager, I spent two years in the boarding part of a convent in Granada. The nuns had adapted a part of it for female residence.
Like me, a few girls in that residence couldn´t afford the monthly bill so we gave them our grant and our hands to work cleaning the common spaces and , after the bisop allowed it, we could enter the clustered areas , where nobody except the nuns and doctors, in case of need , and priests to give the sacrament of extreme unction, could step in.
Each Saturday was the cleaning day of those special areas. You could be sweeping and mopping endless corridors, old cells that were not longer used as seclusion areas but as an all-purpose room full of dust and objects that I still have no idea what they were for.

Those were days of exciting trip-cleanings : I had to go through really long corridors and I used to look at some old pictures, sculptures of a famous granadian artist, kitch decorations of all kinds... until I reached the place to clean.

One Saturday I was cleaning a box hung on the wall of the upper choir. It was made of wood, with rest of faded reddish, green and golden paint on it. There were two little doors of cristal, dust was almost solidified on the little windows and on the small glass boxes inside the big one. I opened it full of curiosity. I said ` wtf-yuck!` with disgust and put it all back in its place. It was a reliquary with bits of finger bones, hair, nails...

During anothe trip the finding was pretty different. I was cleaning a huge room full of boxes of cardboard, and little montains of objects with clothes and sheets put on them.
A cardboard box was not well closed so obviously I opened it and saw that it was full of small boxes of new bras and knickers! Beautiful lingery of Dior, La Perla, and other expensive brands. Wtf?!!!! Didn´t give much thought to that and I “borrowed” a few of those items. The empty boxes went to the dust bag.
Later I knew that the lingery shop of a dear family of theirs was about to be impounded.

There are a few more wtf moments but that´s enough for today. I will end with this:

Since there is a church inside the convent , they don´t have to pay taxes of any kind. It´s because of an agreement Franco made with the Vatican.

That is a genuine, continous wtf moment if you consider the enormous amount of buildings the Catholic church owns in Spain. So it is billions what the State don´t have as revenues .

instead of clustered areas, read cloister areas

That reliquary would be an ideal place to give someone the finger.