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

Coming back on the Tube from babysitting duties, I am struck once again by the large amount of people who are working late in the Paris area. I get a good cross section since I start from St Germain, westernmost station on the RER line, change at les Halles and then go down south on the Underground. The carriages are full of working people going home, students reading, It didn't use to be this way. Once I felt the tube was not safe after 9 p.m.
I had a thought about Isabel Dalhousie and Applied Ethics when a gang of youths came in at Nanterre. They were not threatening passengers at all, but they were a pack, punching each other, jerky movements, etc and one lit up a cigarette. I fought down the urge to ask him to put it out as I was hopelessly outnumbered. They got off at la Défense so no great harm done. I usually intervene but instinct told me it was not a good idea.
At St Germain a group of young Spanish people had got on the train and they were talking loudly, singing, generally making themselves quite at home. But they didn't feel like a pack of predators like the others. They were just enjoying themselves. You see at once what they are and it's not the clothes they're wearing, it's the body language, the grunts.
Anyway, apart from the exhaustion, it is always a fascinating spectacle to watch and listen to passengers and to feel you belong to the human race in all its variety.
It took me from St Germain to Les Halles to realise I couldn't guess which language the two ladies opposite me were talking.
And so to bed.
Oh no, work first.

Oh, that's so frustrating, isn't it? Having been a teacher of English to foreign students for over 10 years, I pride myself on being able to recognise a fair number of languages, but do get stumped from time to time (and once it was Welsh!!!).

I haven't read any McCall Smith. Sue has read a couple of the Number One Ladies' books, but somehow I don't fancy them. I might be more tempted to read one of his Edinburgh books. Edinburgh has another, far less known crime novelist: Paul Johnston has written a series of books set in Edinburgh in the 2020's. The city in an independent city state, ruled by a Council of Guardians. The Guardians take their lead from Plato's Republic. Global warming has brought about worldwide catastrophe and anarchy. The books satirise Edinburgh civic government. The neighbouring City State of Glasgow is a democracy, which the Platonist Edinburgh city fathers look down on as an abberation.


Douglas

Thanks for the Paul Johnston tip. As I said in another post, Friends, etc. has a good number of references to legal circles in Edinburgh.

I recently discovered the Paul Johnston books and have been hooked. They work on several different layers. Also for me, knowing Edinburgh reasonably well (half my family are there) has added another layer, as I can visualise the places.

Really didn't get into the Number One Ladies' books when I tried one - just didn't work for me.

Edinburgh crime - the latest Quentin Jardine paperback is often a holiday read. Ian Rankin is obligatory..

hebe

I haven' t read the Botswana either but hush. I bought a few in French for B. who hasn't reported yet.
As a translating task, it looks much easier than Mc Grath though I could be tempting fate.
I have ordered two Johnston books, if there's too much explicit sex and violence in it, I shall return and haunt you all.

gulp, er there is sex and violence... more violence than sex - I'm not a fan of violence in novels (nor in RL of course) but it's not overly excessive (just towards the more violent end of what I'll read). It's the concepts that are clever, and an interesting alternative view of the near future (combined with a detective story which I'll always read),

hebe

Douglas might take a look at the Johnston for o/h - a citizen of the Peoples's Republic of Strathclyde.

Thanks petal jam

I've read two I think. As I spend most evenings in front of the computer I actually read very little 'new' stuff. Ten years ago Douglas would spend a large proportion of a saturday finding books for me to read as I could get through five a week. These days a couple of pages of something fairly familiar to stop the brain is more the norm. I have three or four waiting for a time when the computer is broken or I am on holiday (one week max a year).

Sue

Aberdeen has recently acquired a literary detective. Check out:

http://www.ottakars.co.uk/Internet/search/searchDetail.jsp?ISBN=0007193130

BUT

Please also check out:

http://www.simonsays.com/content/content.cfm?sid=358&pid=506482

It's a funny old world, publishing, eh?

Can they possibly be one and the same?

Whatever, here is a quote from the Scotsman's review of the book:

"His Aberdeen is the city in winter - driving wind, relentless rain and people shuffling around, heads down, looking "murderous and inbred". He evokes it memorably, though perhaps in time he will make more of its contradictions and its unique take on Scottishness."

Hmmm... Murderous and inbred, eh?


Douglas

Douglas&Sue (sorry if I have replied to ying instead of yang or vice versa at any point)

<> Suddenly remembered hearing snatches of radio piece with author of "Divided Kingdom" - Rupert Thompson?. Country is partitioned into zones according to four ancient/medieval humours. Most of Scotland & N. E England is Melancholic, the rest I think is Choleric along with N/Ireland and N.West England. Sounded intriguing. Last SIndy carried a review headed: "Morbid, Introspective? You'll have to live in Scotland"

Which leads me to ..any further sightings of Peebs?

petal jam

ps Doubtful at first, but having racked my bleary brains to remember where to find the Johnston ref. it occurs that /maybe/ having all threads in h2g2 croygenically frozen is an advantage.

cryogenic, obviously.

pj

Peebs has been to and has left Aiberdeen. It was briefly noted in The Bull, but no substantive posting has appeared from him since. Peebs parked his van near to the old Grampian TV site, next to a church, and suffered no shortage of invitations - three meals per day each day of his visit.

Douglas

Thanks D. Am halucinating about a rambulance webcam.

pj