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

The hops on my wild hop plant are now abundant.

When I was a kid living in Kent my mum took me hop picking. All the local women did it..and all the kids came along.

It was amazing, these giant hop plants growing the hop poles. And underneath a green gloom. All growing in rows. While the mothers were busy picking and putting the hops into large hessian baskets..we kids would be running around the whole time and playing between the rows. It was like a little country..and it was fun to get a bit lost.

One day some of us went down the road to the oast house where they are dried. Inside a ladder took you up platform upon platform of hops drying. Inside was an incredible heat..and the smell of hops was overwhelming. It's such a special strange smell. Impossible to describe but heady and enervating.

All the pubs in Kent are decorated with hops at this time of year..still are I think.

She didn't go hop picking though after we moved when I was seven. Its amazing how vivid my memories of it still are though.

My plant.

http://bit.ly/qh5IHk

I have a couple of hop plants, too. They're becoming more common here as ornamentals. And I make beer, so I'm quite familiar with that very unusual smell.

yes inside that oast house it was totally intoxicating.

My mother said she spent the summer hop picking when she was pregnant with me...it might have had an effect?

on the other hand . . .



my mother ate gra`pefruit every morning while carrying me.


To this day I can't abide the stuff.

I know its a bit offtopic to say the least..but a good one.

Neighbours keep coming to tell me about the car being clamped. They are worried I won't notice and get in it to drive away..It's become an object of community bonding

I have to keep explaining that the cost of unclamping is more than its worth. I can't wait for the lorry to come and take the thing away..

My dad will pay for a new thing

Picked one of the hops earlier and crushed it...and that completely amazing aroma that took me back centuries...

Almost snorted it...couldn't get enough of it.