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

I see you've got a 5 word story going!

Can't join in I'm afraid, other things pressing at moment.

Taking my computer off line tonight in order to take it down to Cambridge for hardware maintenance and update. And to try to get my A A Navigation installed properly!

See you when all is re-assembled sometime next week. There won't be any posting until then.

If anyone asks, would you tell them for me please?

Best Wishes,

Ron

Hello Ron,

What a really nice surprise. I thought you were already in Cambridge. Will miss seeing you around, so make sure you get your computer up and running again really soon. I'll let anyone know where you are.

By the way, Budapest was wonderful.

Pauline

Great; I'm so glad you had a lovely time in Budapest!

Always nice to hear from you too Flame...Pauline.

We shall be back sometime around late Monday, but it will take me some time to get everything re-connected, so I'll probably be posting, etc., around Tuesday lunchtime or soon after then.

Thank you for your help. Don't worry though, I don't think anyone will enquire where I am!

See you soon,

Ron

Missing you.

Come back soon Ron.

Oh Flame! You say the sweetest things!

I've a bit of a story to tell. I've already told it to Cactuscafe. You can read it there if you so wish, I'm sure she wouldn't mind at all!

I've been 'off line' until today, except for the odd quick look at the site on my son's laptop over the last week or two.

I've missed having you around too!

Speak to you soon I hope.

Xantief is away, I note. Bet you miss him also!

Best Wishes, dear lady,

Ron

Ron! Hi!!!!!!

How are you? I had a look in Cactuscafe's space to read what had happened to you, but I couldn't find the link - so I'm still in the dark. I do hope everything is well.

Everything is fine here - and I was really pleased to hear from you.

Pauline

Hello Pauline,

It's so nice to see you back with us all. I hope you had a wonderful time in Budapest.
You can read about my little problems at post 15 of Cactuscafe's (Helen's) thread about Brion Gysin, and the preceding and later postings therein.

I think Xantief is also now back home.

I look forward with eager anticipation to reading more of both his and your own magnificent creations when you both get back into your stride.
I'm sure something good will be bubbling up in that cranium of yours to delight our curiosity!

Speak to you again soon.

Ron

Ron

Hello Ron,

I had an incredible time in Budapest. One of the best European cities I have ever visited. It really was that good!

I wish I could tell you that I was busy writing something, but at the moment I'm not. Sometimes I think it just goes on inside of me, and then I get the urge to write..... Well I hope I will!

I read about your recent problems on the thread. Poor you! Things like that always seem to happen to me. I do hope everything is well now.

I'm working full time at the moment - so life is quite busy. I'm temping for a helicopter company, so maybe one day I'll write a story about a dashing pilot.

Take care my friend

Hello Flame,

I'm so glad you enjoyed your sojourn in Budapest, and that you are now safely back home. (Not that you would be in any kind of danger in Budapest these days!)

I quite understand your situation with regard to your temping 'getting in the way' of your creative juices! I take it you're not being hired as one of their pilots! One never knows what other talents one's h2g2 writing colleagues have up their sleeves! 'This is your captain speaking.' You'd have plenty of writing material there, I imagine!

We still haven't had the rear bedroom picture window unit they cracked on installation replaced. It has been promised for Thursday 20th. Another team from the firm is coming on Friday 14th to insert a window lintel to support the overlying brickwork and then take the old ground floor window out to install the new one. Let's hope all goes well this time!

The 'agro' problem has been at least temporarily resolved. But a leopard never changes his/her spots, so the 'broken glass' will remain strewn for us to put a foot wrong. Some people cannot resist a 'dig' at others they think are easily bullied because they are quiet and good natured; as Pat and I both 'come over'. But, as it happens, neither of us take kindly to such targeted nonsense for long before saying our piece in response. You wouldn't blame us for that, I think.
Speak to you when you have a little time to spare!

Ron

Hello Ron,

Me as a pilot? Wonderful thought - but the only thing I seem to have floating around in the clouds these days is my thoughts. (Probably the best place for them). I've really enjoyed working for this company, a very interesting role. Shame it all comes to an end in a few days.

By sheer coincidence I'm reading a book called First Light - about a chap called Geoffrey Wellum, a spitfire fighter pilot during WWII. It's a borrowed book, and probably not one I would have selected for myself. Nevertheless it's an excellent read.

It looks like the creative course I put my name down for is going ahead. From what I know about it so far there will only be about half a dozen of us, so quite a nice size class. The tutor has requested us to write and tell him what we hope to gain from it. I had intended to jot my own thoughts down last night - but I fell asleep on the sofa! I missed the end of Silent Witness as well, lol. I don't normally fall asleep like that. I must have been more tired than I thought.

I hope your building work goes ahead as planned. I had the builders in for almost a whole year, (on and off) and it was an absolute nightmare! I still have some work that needs to be done, but I did start to feel rather fed up with it all. I've put off the rest of it for the moment - but at the back of my mind I know it will have to be done sometime. Over that year anything that could have gone wrong - probably did, so I do empathise with you.



Pauline

Hello Flame,

Me, I'm just plane mad! Or as my two sons used to say: 'Dad, your just PLAIN mad!) And they just might be right! I like, and have always had a good knowledge of the aeroplane or aircraft ( either of which all RAF personnel must call them; 'airplane' is strictly an American term; and a plane is something carpenters use to level wood).But you know all this drivel without my telling you, I'm sure.
I'm glad you've had an enjoyable experience working with the fly guys though! They'll probably invite you back when they're short staffed again, what! (As the older pilots used to talk.)
When I was 16, lying in hospital for about 8 months in 1956, I read Paul Brickhill's account of the Battle of Britain, and Douglas Bader's autobiography: 'Reach for the Sky'. I was always a precocious reader for my age. I started another RAF wartime account, but fell asleep just before the consultant surgeon's ward rounds, and he ordered the sister to take the books off me because he thought all this reading was exhausting my energy before my major surgery!
Anyway, enough about my obsession with aircraft.

I hope you get a great deal out of your creative course (presumably writing?) It sounds like an almost ideal number for such a course; plenty of personal attention and probably intensive tuition; lucky you!
At our local college (actually, our next-door-neighbour!) if numbers are too low on registration, or fall off during the year they close the class down as uneconomic.
I took an expensive course with the Open College of the Arts a few years back on creative writing. My tutor was Mark Illis, who writes scripts for 'Emmerdale', and has written for 'The Bill' and other soaps. He also writes radio plays, and was a tutor for a well known organisation in Yorkshire. You can read about him on the Web (Google). He is a great teacher; very encouraging, and says that writing is his whole life's work and ambition. You can see his name pop up from time to time in the credits of Emmerdale as the writer of that particular episode. The 'Emmerdale' writers work as a team on the whole storyline, and then allocate one of their number to write each separate episode.

Sorry to bore you with my meanderings!

Ron

Hello Ron!

Well here I am at last! The hard drive on my laptap failed so I've been without internet access for the last couple of weeks. Talk about being inconvenient! It's surprising how much you miss being able to get online. Lukily I managed to backup my work before it crashed completely. Whew! I have a few unfinished stories still to write, and I'm so pleased I didn't lose them.

Since I was last here I'm now working for a building company, secretary to the construction manager. I've never done this sort of role before, but it isn't too bad - apart from all the mud on site! It's only a temporary position, but I have a second interview for a permanent job on Monday.

The writing course I was so looking forward to has been cancelled. The hire of a room was quite expensive and a few people pulled out - so it was no longer viable. The tutor is hoping to sort something out for the New Year.

So how's everything with you?

Pauline

Hello Flame,

That was good timing on your part; I came on-line at almost the same time you posted, and saw you at the top of my screen when you had been posted for only 6 minutes!

Sorry to hear that your intended course was cancelled. Hope my last posting to you didn't put a jinx on your intentions... (in this thread)!

You might find that your secretarial position with a construction firm is very interesting. I did a temporary stint in one, on site, with a motorway construction contractor; we were in a couple of mobile offices, with mud trodden everywhere, just as you describe. I did some of the basic accounting work for them. But it was too far from home to be viable as a long term position. They were having to remove thousands of tons of chemical and toxic materials in a constant stream of heavy trucks to an authorised dump some miles away. One worrying factor was that most of the paperwork was dirty and stained with goodness knows what by the time it got back to the office huts!

I am so glad you didn't lose your 'work-in-progress' stories during your computer problems; that would be a disappointment to us all as your readers.
I look forward to your next story with eager anticipation, as, I am sure, do many other researchers!

At present I am 'suffering' some peculiar physical effects of having a '3 in 1' 'flu injection last Tuesday week. Pat had the same 'strains' at the same time but she is fine; full of her usual energy! She's going right through the house at the moment with the vacuum cleaner! I feel quite tired and have been light-headed, nauseous, shivering, hot and cold, coughing and sneezing for the last 5 or 6 days! I also have a bit of a 'rash' around my trunk (my tusks and large floppy ear lobes ache a bit too!).

'Elephant- man' Ron

Hi Ron,

At least the injection will protect you from the flu, albeit an unpleasant experience at the moment. But I hope you soon feel better.

Talking about flu, I was in Hong Kong in 1997 when bird flu was first discovered. I believe it came in from China. At the time I didn't really think too much about it, although it did put me off chicken or duck (which I loved there) for a very long time.

This job is only temporary. They are building a midwifery and nursing school for the UEA (University of East Anglia) and hand it over to the client at the beginning of December. It is quite an impressive building.

The first time I heard the manager on the phone talking about his secretary, well you should have seen my face! I've never been called a secretary before. Still, I expect I've been called worse. Ha!

Good to be back online.

Thanks for your comments on Christmas Magic. Much appreciated. It's getting towards that time of year again so I thought I'd submit it for review. I had no luck with my attempt to get it published.

I've been trying to think if I could come up with a Xmas story for this year but nothing springs to mind as yet. Still, that story only came to me a few days before Xmas day last year. So maybe there's hope for me yet!

Hello Ron,

Just wanted to say hi! Hope everything is going well for you, and that you and your family will have a wonderful Xmas.

Best Wishes

Hello Flame; what a nice surprise to hear from you!

I had taken it that your new position as someone's secretary was preventing you from coming on line as much these days.

Have you written anything new lately? Or is that also 'on hold' until you can find adequate time to think up your interesting plots?

We are all fine here, thank you. We'll be down in Cambridge around the Christmas period for a few days with our youngest and his family. We are looking forward to that, as you would expect.

Our eldest and his wife, who live in South Mimms, Herts., are only about 12 to 14 miles east of the Bunsfield Oil Depot conflagration, and were under its dreadful black cloud for a few hours on Sunday. We are a little concerned for their safety in terms of the fallout from the toxic smoke, but they seem to be quite relaxed about it. The smoke has now drifted south west, so the 'corridor' affected by it runs down toward the Isle of Wight and Dorset. I hope the people down there don't sustain any harm to either themselves or their lovely environment. It is one of our favourite haunts.

Speak to you again soon!

Ron

Oh!

And a Very Happy Christmas and New Year to you and yours Flame.

Ron

Hi Ron,

Lovely to hear from you. Ha ha about the secretary. I've had plenty of spare time, but I haven't used it for writing. My muse has deserted me - or maybe I just have no ideas for a story at the moment. I think about writing sometimes - but that's about as far as I get - thinking.

So you are heading this way for Xmas. Cambridge is a lovely place, and I hope you and your family have a wonderful time.

If I ever get around to writing anything again I'll let you know.....

Happy New Year Ron!

Hope all is well.

Flame