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

The Star takes a keen interest in the world around him. Bugs of all kinds are still popular, he enjoys uprooting weeds* and you’ve just got started on trees.**

However, the Star’s main interest remains people, and the curious things they get up to.

Which is why, when he found a man bending anxiously over a camera tripod, the Star bounced up and asked his second favourite question.

‘What you doing?’

The photographer ignored him.

The Star was insistent.

So the man straightened up and prepared to explain that he was waiting for the very impressive flock of swifts (or possibly swallows) which gather on the omnipresent cranes down by the river every autumn*** to take wing so he could photograph the moment of flight…

…when they took off.


*And, sometimes, not weeds. This is embarrassing when he does it repeatedly in front of a Park Ranger.

**Note to self. Get a good tree book. You have spent too long in an urban environment. You’ll be calling an elm a hornbeam next.

Talk about timing!

A four-year-old VV never asked 'What are you doing?'

It was always 'What are you *trying* to do?'

One friend replied 'I am not *trying* to do anything. I *am* baking a cake!'


That shut her up for all of 5 minutes, when she asked 'Why are you trying to bake a cake, when you can buy one?'

What I left out is the amount of incredulity the Star invariably injects into the question. People find it most disconcerting. Although because he's three, also charming.

But 'what are you *trying* to do?' that's genius. Way to go depressing the adults' pretensions.

Oh, children and their questions. When my son was small, we and my friend (son the same age as mine) passed a very small man and her son piped up: "Mum, why is that man so small?" in a very loud voice.

That reminds me of a story told by a mother of a little girl. The girl was very quick to remark out loud on people's appearance.

So the mother managed to talk her into not commenting on it right there and then, but discuss it once home.

But then, one day on the tube, a woman with a very big and crooked nose sat down opposite them.

The little girl stared intently at her and, unable to hold her tongue any longer, remarked in a loud voice:

'Mummy, mummy, we'll *have to talk about that nose once we're home!'

Curtain.

B and I used to talk about people in English when we were in Russia.

Then we moved to the UK.

It was some time before we got out of the habit.

Now I find myself frustrated when I am out and about and want to make a remark about someone and the person I am with does not speak Russian.