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

I was starting to bore myself last year, so goodness only knows what any of my readers thought, if I had any left by the time I gave up on the 13th. But I managed the whole month in 2013, so here goes.

As before I'm keeping it my journal, but as requested I've also created an A page: A87862332 and will link to the relevant bit, as long as I can remember how to do GuideML. It's been a while.

#2 November 1st entry, an update on me.

In NaJoPoMo 2013 I reviewed the loose ends from NaJoPoMo 2012. Time to revisit these and see if, as I suspect, life is standing still.

2012: "I currently live in a small village in the Garden of England..." 2015: Yes, still here, same village, same house, still living with a fat ginger cat called Pumpkin. When Sunshine went to university Moonlight moped about so we got a cat as a substitute sister. Moonlight eventually went to uni herself, both girls stayed in their university cities, but the cat still seems to be here.

2012: "I work as a teacher..." 2015: Yes, still in the same school, though I have reduced all my responsibilities and dropped to 4 days a week. I have Mondays off. We had Ofsted, it didn't go well and we remain under the spotlight, which is hard. In previous NaJoPoMos I've written some wider thoughts on the profession and probably will this year too, but I'm trying to detach myself from it.

2012: "My health is what the medical profession would call "excellent"..." 2015: Yes, still is as far as I know. I swim 2-3 times a week, spend most of the working day on my feet and in the company of people who keep me on my toes.

2012 "...my maternal grandmother lived to 96, my mum is an extremely well 77 and if she doesn't get there first I intend to be the first to see 100." 2015: Mum was diagnosed with the blood cancer Acute Myeloid Leukemia in September 2013, a month before her 78th birthday. AML has a very short life expectancy of weeks or months, and it's untreatable in over 65s. A quick look at the graph on the wikipedia entry shows only about 5% of her age group get to 2 years after diagnosis. Mum's now 26 months after diagnosis and will be 80 next weekend. We have no idea how she's in the 5% and not the 95%. Yesterday she sent me several texts asking for suggestions of interesting webpages she could look at on the library computer, as the sun was shining so she went for a walk and that's where she ended up. (I suggested Pottermore.)

2012: "My beautiful, amazing daughters are 25 and 22." 2015: Now 28 and 25 and still amazing and beautiful. Sunshine gets married in August 2016, Moonlight as her bridesmaid.

2012 "I'm a convert to the idea of audio books..." 2015: Still am, although also a convert of 6 Music which I listen to through my phone in the car too. This week I've done a lot of driving, so listened to Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake, as the start was a bit difficult to get into on short drives but I've put some hours in now.

2012: "...my paid hobby as a film extra..." 2015: A while ago I did a day on "Legend" which came out earlier this year. I haven't seen it, but by all accounts I've ended up as a deleted scene. So I'll wait for the DVD.

So yes, life stands still, although mum's health is the main reason for not making changes. As far as my NaJoPoMo 2015 goes, as in previous years, the end of October was far more interesting than the start of November, but that's due to the placement of Half Term. Last year I was in the Strictly audience for the first weekend of HT. This year I did a few exciting things, so the next few days will be an account of "What I did on my holidays".

Somehow I seem to get "Oryx and Crake" mixed up with "Station 11" in my mind. If we ever get an apocalypse, will the period after it measure up to what fiction writers have imagined?

Nice start, by the way.

Thank you, and welcome!

Would you recommend Station Eleven? Both are written by Canadians, are they particularly worried about a post apocalypse world do you think? Maybe that's the source of your confusion. I remember the UK in the 70s, power strikes, 3 day weeks, empty shelves in the shops, rubbish piling up etc. So in my mind the post apocalypse will be like that but with less cool music. It wouldn't make for a very interesting story though.

" in my mind the post apocalypse will be like that but with less cool music."

"Station 11" takes place around the fringes of Lake Michigan. With electricity a thing of the past, music will have to be acoustic. The survivors form a combination orchestra and touring theater company that does "King Lear" and other Shakespeare plays, as well as parts of the standard orchestral repertoire, limited only by hols in their instrument distribution.

"Oryx and Crake" takes place along some North American beach that was not a beach until the ice caps melted. Chapter 9 is very reminiscent of portion of "Station 11," as Snowman/Jimmy goes through an abandoned house trying to imagine what it was like when the house's residents began dying of the virus that killed the human race. Many of Station 11's scene also involved foraging for supplies in empty houses. Let's face it, when civilization as we know it goes belly up, whoever is left will have to struggle to find the products they depend on, or invent substitutes....

Oh that's great news about your Mum! As soon as you started your round up, I braced myself, but yay! Horrible to have it hanging over her for you all I am sure, of course.

Thank you Sol! I wondered if you'd make it here and went off to read Herself earlier today, just to see what you were up to over there.

We have no idea how mum came to be one of the longest living people her age with AML, and know it will change in an instant eventually, so we never make plans too far in advance, but we're tentatively planning a family meal out for her birthday. She has good days and bad of course, there are times when she's too weak to leave her flat, but she's in a retirement complex full of feisty old biddies who lived through the war and stand no nonsense from anyone. They are fiercely independent but very supportive of each other. I'm so glad mum moved there, just after her own mum died 8 years ago.

[Amy P]

Sorry to hear about your Mum... hope she continues to be as healthy as she sounds, for as long as possible...

Those who have hope seem to have the best shot at survival....

There's no survival with AML, all that can be done is palliative treatment. She's managed to dodge germs for a couple of years and takes antibiotics, anti viral and anti fungal drugs, uses anti bacterial soap and gel and antiseptic sprays etc. She stays on the "clean" diet recommended at the start, and gets out in the fresh air as much as possible. Blood tests every week, transfusions of blood or platelets when needed and of course, a positive mental attitude.

Well, hope she has a better shot of staying clear of infections than I seem to do Positive mental attitude, or just insanity seems to help... IMO

What I did on my holidays - 24th October - morning. In which coelacanth and Moonlight are frustrated by the uselessness of other people, but get a big surprise!

When my lovely daughters were young we had many days out and did unusual things. Even as adults they still like outings. Sunshine tends to favour big events, this year was the Bristol Balloon Fiesta in August, http://www.bristolballoonfiesta.co.uk/ and last year I took her to the Strictly recording. Moonlight likes smaller or more obscure visits, contemporary theatre, art etc. For example in April we went to an "immersive performance" called Maze, at the Margate Winter Gardens http://www.margatewintergardens.co.uk/event/maze/ and most years we are Groundlings at the Globe. This year we saw a delightfully light and fizzy "Much Ado About Nothing".

At the start of September Moonlight emailed me a link to a behind the scenes tour of the Natural History Museum, to see some of the specimens they don't have on show but are preserved in spirit as part of their "wet" collection. http://www.nhm.ac.uk/visit/whats-on/programs/nhm/behind-the-scenes_spirit_collection_tour.html She suggested it for my half term, when she could take a few days off too. Of course I booked straight away! Saturday 24th October, 11.30 - 12.15. I then had a plan for the afternoon, found something amazing in a different part of London and booked for 1.30, which required arrival by 1.15. Timing would be tight but worth it. (All about this tomorrow.)

Moonlight arrived in the Garden of England Friday evening, and we looked at the terms and conditions. Only a few people on the tour at a time, no bags, phones or cameras. On the day, take the confirmation email to the desk, collect tickets, check in bags for free and wait for the guide 15 minutes before the start. We decided to take the earliest train, and got to the museum for 10. We collected our tickets and deposited our bags straight away. This gave us time to check out old friends, the diplodocus, the blue whale and of course to say hello to the coelacanth. We also fitted in the animatronic dinosaur exhibition before the crowds started queuing. It gets very busy! We located the Darwin Centre, worked out a plan to get out quick, mindful of the need to be elsewhere by 1.15. Google maps said the cross town dash would be a total of 40 minutes, so we had 20 minutes in hand.

At 11.15 we were at the meeting point by the main entrance. 6 other people joined us. None of them had read the information about collecting tickets or depositing bags, the cloakroom queue had built up and the tour started frustratingly late because we all had to wait to get this done.
Our tour guide knew her stuff, but we made to feel ignorant and like we were supposed to have done homework. She bombarded us with questions about the building, which of course off the top of our head we didn't know, and then she proceeded to answer her own questions. Lots of them. At length. This went on for 15 minutes and we hadn't even left the meeting point. Then she led us on a comical top speed chase through the ever increasing crowds in the main hall, before stopping outside the Darwin Centre, asking us questions again, this time about David Attenborough. We finally entered the behind the scenes part at about 12, and remember the tour was meant to be 11.30-12.15!

Wow! Lots of shelves with all kinds of specimens in jars, but the first interesting thing was the labels on the ones in one cabinet, showing The Beagle! Another set of quiz questions about Darwin from our guide, which of course she then answered for herself. A look at a very long tank with their 8.62-metre-long giant squid. She explained how specimens came to them, how the preserving fluid was topped up but rarely completely replaced, how the labels on the jars were added at the museum and quizzed us on the difference between squid and octopus. When her back was turned I noticed another of the party take her phone out of her pocket and take a sneaky picture of the squid!

Moonlight and I were getting slightly anxious about the timing by this point, but eventually we get to the back of the room and the guide drew out attention to one large jar and one small one. And then asked a question about coelacanths! But I said nothing because by this point I was staring at the jar. I had no idea the NHM had another! She showed us the smaller jar and this was a whole coelacanth egg! Amazing! I could have stood there a long time. But now I've seen two coelacanths in my life.

However, we had to go, it was already 12.20. So I very politely asked if the guide could let us out. She said that meant everyone had to leave. I did apologise, but explained where we were going, and reminded her the tour had started very late, which wasn't our fault. So we were let out, while she continued to pose quiz questions to the rest of the group in the corridor.

40 minutes journey, with 20 minutes in hand and we'd already used 5. Moonlight runs faster so I gave her the cloakroom tickets and off she went, reversing the earlier high speed dash through the main hall. But by the time I got to the entrance she was still in a very long queue, mostly of people checking baby buggies in or out. Only two members of staff at what is called the "Main Cloakroom" and nobody going anywhere for a while...

Coelacanth: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Coelacanth,_Spirit_Collection_Tour,_Natural_History_Museum,_London_08.jpg
Egg: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Coelacanth_egg,_Spirit_Collection_Tour,_Natural_History_Museum,_London_07.jpg

[Amy P]

Oh MY! I am looking forward until tomorrow! What an excellent story. Good you didn't cut and run before the coelacanth!

My son got to go behind the scenes at the NHM last year because it turned out that one of his Russian classmate's father worked there in the bug section, and casually invited him back after class to look at what I gather were rows and rows and rows of little drawers of bugs.

Sadly I never wasn't there, and I never did work out which classmate/ father it was otherwise I would have totally became their next best friend.

Thank you Coelacanth for sharing such an excellent journal of all your updates. I hope all is well with your mother and that she enjoyed going on the Pottermore website.

Thanks Sol, I knew you'd like it! I hope the next installment lives up to expectations. It briefly features a place I have mentioned to you in the past.

Thanks for your kind words Rosa, yes I believe there's a lot to interest her on the Pottermore site. I printed off one of the stories and posted it to her too.