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

I am much more homesick here than I have been anywhere else. Wonder why.Anno Domini?
On Tuesday John told me that our student programmer was going on leave tomorrow. Hence frantic going to bed late and getting in early (and getting astoundingly wet in the process) Almost at the end of today's meetings he announced that he made a mistake and she's going next Friday. What are the penalties for killing middle aged Australians?
David, my contemporary, has what I would've called sciatica. I told him I seemed to have cured mine with HRT.
The fire bombing occurred after I left the building yesterday (Apres moi le deluge again)
I was also told earlier in the week that Hong Kong cows (I've never seen any) are full of antiobiotics. So I've been scouring places for non HK milk which is nontheless fresh.
Also found out that the reason green dragon plates are no longer made is that the glaze contains lead (this is OK for cups and bowls because they're white inside) How much lead can you pick up from a dinner plate? And why didn't the micro-wave go doolally when I put dragon bowls in it?

Isn't the green glaze underneath a clear glaze?
The reason the microwave didn't object is probably because there wasn't much lead in them.

Gooday Wandrin'star,

Many middle-aged Australians are already spiritually, emotionally and intellectually dead, so don't even contemplate depriving us of what little mortal coil is left to us. You sound fraught - I hope a good weekend will restore your batteries and whatnot. I hope all our talk about Essex is not what has brought on this bout of homesickness; perhaps you really do care after all! Take care,

Walter.

Its probably because there's a different ex-pat setup in Hong Kong? Also since you now actually have a home and it is newly empty?

I am reliably informed that killing your coworkers is a career limiting move - regardless of their nationality

Hi chaps,
I've had a home since mid China. unless it couldn't be considered a home until we got the open fireplace.
I don't think you can be on the right track, Walter. A longing for Essex would be too gruesome

Gooday Wandrin'star,

Nevertheless cobber, I reckon the call of the Essex coast is stirring up rumblings somewhere in there! Don't forget, it is forty days to go until the commencement of the Olympics. Take care,

Walter.

Do I really want to return to the windswept marshes? (They're probably all filled in by now) The icy water (and not very clean either) where the Thames meets the North Sea. The snobbish, not to say bigoted, teachers. The lace curtain neighbours.

I've left a big space because I can't think of any connection between Essex and the Olympics. I'm trying to clear my desk for the latter, but more and more stuff keeps getting dumped on it

Where is Essex? I'm in Canada and don't have my atlas handy
Hoppa

Gooday Wandrin'star,

Didjahaveagoodweekend? Gee you paint a bleak picture, although I absolutely loved the description 'lace curtain neighbours'. What about Finchingfield, the Colne Valley, the Essex part of Constable country, Colchester Castle cricket ground, Layer Road? Come on, admit it cobber, deep down you still maintain an abiding affection for the place. You take good care,

Walter.

PS,

A tidy desk is a sign of an untidy mind. Have you thought about a session with the shredding machine? If nothing else, it can be very therapeutic.

Walter.

Hi unatlassed Canadians. Essex is east of London, the county that's on the north side of the Thames. It means the land of the East Saxons which is what it was originally. Sussex on the south side of the Thames was the land of the South Saxons. For some reason Essex has long been and extension of the East End of London and therefore looked down upon. Southend was where the eastenders went to have shellfish on their days out (OK Walter, I admit to missing Saturday shellfish teas - a bit)Much of south Essex, along the coast and along the railway line, became dormitory towns for those working in the city of London (an hour's journey each way by steam train was considered reasonable)
Many of the cricket pitches that I loved in my youth were deemed unfit, but I agree they had character (Southchurch Park regularly got flooded and Chalkwell Park was really too small for anything except schoolboy stuff. Some of the towns were once great (Tilbury, for example) but the "arterial" roads did for them in the thirties, bombing upset them in the forties, jerrybuilt houses in the fifties and early sixties and after the pier burnt down.....

My programmer really IS going away this Friday. I have just been in an unrelated meeting for three hours and my desk no has 40 scripts to be marked by this time tomorrow. Fine, except it's stand in stuff. I haven't taught it and each one has a page of footnotes to be checked.So I think I'll go for tea first.

I was quite considerably riled when I read one of those "London vs. Countryside living" articles in the observer when it went into an attack on Lincolnshire bus services...
From this I can only deduce that (a) anno domini is involved and (b) absence makes the heart grow fonder.

Gooday Wandrin'star,

Excuse my lack of knowledge, but what is EFL? 40 scripts sounds daunting. Have the fond memories of Essex caused you to mark more benignly?

Spearcarrier: Lincolnshire bus services, past or present, are an unknown quantity to me, but I bet Wandrin'star will come over all nostalgic about the Eastern National Omibus Company. Take care,

Walter.

Not on your Nelly (whatever that is). Bus transport was blue and white things provided by Southend Corporation. I did my countryside roaming by tandem.Pleasant charabanc trips to places like Finchinfield and you other possibilities. Picnics on the beach at Chalkwell. Southend carnival parade used to be the longest in the country with bands like the Dagenham Girl Pipers and the travelling amusement fair that came at the same time (about this time of year)was a great taste of exotic illegality, but ...I don't think so Walter

Gooday Wandrin'star,

Now there is a bit of nostalgia that you have conjured up - the annual fete and travelling amusement fair. Our used to be held on the cricket ground at Earls Colne, as you say about this time of year. Dodgems, those funny boat-shaped contraptions where you haul on ropes to swing yourselves to and fro and higher and higher, coconut shies, toffee apples, the smell of earth and canvas in the marquees and the men drinking brown ale. The produce stalls and adults vying for who had grown the best marrow or tomato, stalls with cakes and home-made jams. And I used to be obsessed with the stall where you threw darts at paper goldfish and if you were able to stick one you won a real goldfish in a clear plastic bag full of water. And then, a month later, the Harvest Festival fete which used to be held in the Rectory grounds. Wandrin'star, how can you say there are no fond memories of Essex? You take good care,

Walter.

Good morning,Walter.
Did I say there were _no_ fond memories? I lived there for 14 years and I'm not _that_ bitter and twisted. The fairs were great, especially the travelling barkers who had the first Elvis quiffs. The local schoolboys soon cottoned on to the sex appeal of something longer than short back and sides,but alas the school uniform still included soppy hats. So the cap's peak had to be broken to accommodate the carefully combed and greased front hair. The back was equally carefully combed into a DA.
It amuses me that after years of campaigning against the school cap, its demise was immediately followed by ubiquitous baseball caps.
Will now wander off for some coffee to sustain me in this ridiculous grading. (10 to go)EFL = English as a Foreign Language, which is a good way of travelling,but has its longeurs (in this case several days of acute boredom)

Sorry, I should have changed the title to reflect the topic drift.

Gooday Wandrin'star,

I just knew it, you really do have a great deal of affection for the old county. And you did evoke a smile with your recollection of DA haircuts, which I assume also came with the 'Tony Curtis' forelock as well as Elvis quiffs, replete with lashings of Brilliantine and suchlike. Whoops, English as a Foreign Language. The way things are going, there might well be ample scope for teaching English as a first language. Hey, and 'longueur', what an attractive and much under-used word! Your work and travels sound so interesting, and yet I guess that all work has its mundane and boring bits. I've never marked papers etc, only ever been on the receiving end: sometimes it's really good and at others it is truly awful. Take care,

Walter.

(I hope you were amused to realise that I've taught EFL in OZ) I have fonder memories of Yorkshire (I did my first degree at Leeds) of the West Midlands (I did my master's at Aston which is in Birmingham) and Lincolnshire, of course,where I have had a house since 1986. The younger son has just decamped from there to Staffordshire, about which I know nowt but the pics he's sent look smashing.When I think of England it's the patchwork fields of the midlands that come to mind, not the Essex marshes.

Staffordshire does look nice, doesn't it. I am slightly irked that he's living it in a "very big house in the country" whilst I have to scrape and peck just to afford a bijuox pied-a-terre .

*wonders if he can buy a stone cottage in that area...*