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

On Saturday morning it took me 2and a half hours and about 45 pounds to move a bed,three chairs, a table, a coffee table, three bookshelves and a microwave about two hundred yards. Why? because the move was more vertical than horizontal. I have moved from a main thoroughfare to a "ladder street" round the corner. This meant everything was carried on the bloke's back between a festival and a building site and then up fifty odd steps in a mild drizzle.Should he have charged more?

hmmmmm......I find that I'm not quite sure what a ladder street is....I might know one if I saw one, though. What are they?

Before the escalator was builtand before most of the high-rise buildings were thought of,many streets from Central HK up the hill were flights of steps,sometimes with landings. Many had markets up the sides. There's a dinosaur near Lane Crawford in Central, where the stalls sell only ribbons and similar haberdashery. "Ladder street" is a mistranslation of the Cantonese for stairway. Mine runs from a wet market to Caine road and is extraordinarily quiet.

ah! That would explain my lack of understanding. Very few people speak English with me.