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

Anagram of my real name : Whalebite Zone
no anagrams of my h2g2 name - too many consonants I guess.

Your last name is Owen?

Ha ha. Whalebite Zone made me laugh suddenly. Can you imagine someone making a sign on a beach that says, "Whale Bite Zone"? Maybe I'm just starting to get tired or something.

Yes, I thought of the Whale Bite Zone as being a particularly treacherous part of the beach - and how did you guess - take Elizabeth out of Whale Bite Zone and there's not a lot left...

Well, 'Weno" was going to be my second guess.

How's the wine holding up?

Oh my, you don't want to know about the wine - that was polished off some considerable time ago - I would have opened another bottle but it is getting late - so it's coffee now...

Wow, has that much time gone by? Hmmm...coffee sounds good. I think I'll cook me up a batch once I'm finished my root beer.

So you never say much about your roommate (flatmate?) DM. What's she do? Do you get along well? I've never had any luck with roommates. They always seem to lose their job a month after they move in. Then they sponge.

I get on really well with my flatmate. She's a care assistant at a nursing home for the elderly, and works funny hours. She thinks I am insane spending so much time online (and I'm sure she doesn't appreciate the fact that I am constantly using the phone line).

We are lucky to share the same sense of humour - this makes a big difference. She repremands me for being a lazy tart and I laugh, then she laughs etc...

I used to live in a really crumby bedsit (do you have bedsits in Canada - rent a room in a building - usually a kitchen/diner/bedroom combo - and share bathroom facilites) and it was grim. So answered an ad in the local newsagent window for a flat share and here I am. Best thing I could have done - cheap rent; shared bills; groovy flat (with bonkers decoration), certain shared interests and hobbies (esp. pets, apart from the pesky weevils).

She thinks I am a computer geek though - how silly.

Damn, another gratuitous "W-word" reference. That was a cheap shot; I was being earnest there.

That's great that you get along well with your rommate. We don't have bedsits here, I don't think (is that like a bed and breakfast?).

My worst rommate experience was many, many years ago when I had broken up with my last girlfriend (about fourteen years ago) because she turned evil on me (we split on bad terms but have since buried the hatchet). I moved into this amazing two-bedroom place with a huge patio overlooking an enclosed, landcaped courtyard. Only 530 bucks a month (about 220 pounds). I got a rommate who seemed like a nice decent guy. Problem was, three weeks after he moved in, he started going out with my ex-girlfriend. He gave her her own key and she was sitting there watching my TV every day that I came home from work. Then, about a month and a half later, he lost his job and started bouncing checks off me. It all ended rather badly, I'm afraid. Been single ever since. Perhaps this has traumatised me in some way.

Cheap and earnest aren't necessarily mutually exclusive.


I thought bedsits might be a peculiarly British phenomenom - they really are awful. A bed and breakfast is different again - these are sort of short term boarding houses where you get a room (like a really lousy hotel room) for the night, and yes you guessed it, breakfast in the morning. It's like staying at your aunties house, but paying a nightly fee. They are a cheap alternative to hotels for the budget traveller in the UK (as hotels here tend to be outrageously expensive).

Bedsits are just simply evil. They are just like renting a one room apartment (or studio flat as they are laughably called here), but there is no private bathroom or loo. This is shared amongst the other people living in the same building / floor etc. They are notoriously miserable, and about the cheapest way you can live by yourself (apart from in a tent or your car). Absolutely awful.

Sakes, how long did you live like that?

Way way too long - I was lucky in as much as I got on OK with the other people that I knew that shared the same building - but the tennants would change virtually every week and it was impossible to keep track of the people sharing the same house as you. As I said, evil.

And I've been really lucky with this place. I didn't know DM before I moved in, so we're lucky to get on so well. The flat I was in before the bedsit hell scenario was bigger than this one, but I didn't get on too well with my flatmate - and when she moved her boyfriend in a) without consulting me and b) assuming that we'd still share all rent/bills etc. two ways - well, that was it really.

Well, that does sound perfectly evil. But at least he wasn't your ex-boyfriend that she moved in.

Absolutely - that would have been too too evil. But the past is behind us now - actually i guess the past has always been behind us.

Elezabeth Wino...

"Wino"? Is the coffee not helping, then?

By the way, did you like my brownie recipe? Oh well, I thought it was funny. Don't you have the term "brown-noser" out there?

We do indeed.

but you can't be frivolous about this self-inflicted lack-of-chocolate nightmare - or else the moose gets it.

I think I may have driven you insane.

Hmmm.... moose chocolate. How does the chocolate get harvested from the moose? The brownie faery uses its magic spatula to reap the hide of the moose of its precious chocolate. Then the moose hibernates, and the bunnies come out and make interesting things out of the chocolate, then they all drink gin and play mah-jongh to the strains of birthday accordion music.

Well, that should finish you off, then.

Damn, forgot to get my coffee....

aaaaargh..... gibber gibber