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

Walter is this you? How is Beloved? Did she get my site about the apple trees in the UK? Please call back

Shirps
xx

Hi from another old friend Have you all noticed that we don't seem to have anthing like as many old conversations as we ought? I can't find our old conversation anywhere in my personal space. Oh well, we'll just have to start another one I guess

Hi - it's great to hear from you. Couldn't contact you, but did keep in touch with Gosh via e-mail. If you look on some of my conversations I think he's replied. Maybe we could start a new converse - hmmmmmmm - what should we call it (as long as it isn't Mary of Tudor - 'orrible woman)? I don't mind if it begins on my page - over to you.

Don't quote me on this, but I think all the old conversations are being read by the BBC so they can delete expletives, blashphemy & most important (!!) websites from conversations. Hopefully, they'll bring them back on-line then.

Hence the question of the apple tree web-site, if Beloved didn't get it (my memory's gone), then I'll have to create a guide entry about trees & then I'll be allowed to include the tree site in that!

What a performance - as if we haven't got better things to do

I suppose you've heard about the foot & mouth outbreak over here - devastating to many people as it has a knock-on effect on alot of communities & businesses.

Did I tell you that we went to Madeira (have a Madeira, m'dear!) end Jan/Feb. Before I went I knew absolutely nothing about it, but in one week managed to pick up quite a few bits.

All for now - I'm going to see if anyone else has been in contact yet!

Gosh - whoops! I should have read first that you'd written the message - doh!! Anyway, count the message as to you both!! Coughs terribly in an embarrassed manner

Love to you both
Shirps

Maybe Walter has been eaten by a Tasmanian Tiger

Incidently, the best apples come from Godzone (New Zealand). The best, the very best

Welcome & hello Loony ... & (just to really annoy you) good day Bruce!!

Good years to be in Ye Olde Englande (72-74) - why were you there?

I beg to differ on the apple question, but then I've never eaten a "fresh" NZ apple & I bet it's years since you eat a fresh English apple - so, let's beg to differ

We miss Walter & Beloved Can you contact him, being in the same area - ha!!

Keep well
Shirps

Shirps, alas, no I don't know how to contact Walter. I believe he works at a University in Tasmania - surely a double oxymoron

I was in Pomland in the 70s on my big, as we call it here in Godzone, OE (overseas experience), probably more commonly known as a working holiday.

It consisted of working for small periods so as to finance trips to numerous British/European festivals featuring the consumption of copious amounts of beer and wine.

That's the way to do it!!!

So how come you had enough cash left over to get back home? - ha

Whereabouts in ENGLAND were you based?

You didn't go to the Reading festival in 74 or 75 did you - Wishbone Ash were playing?

Speak later
Shirps

That's the way to do it!!!

So how come you had enough cash left over to get back home? - ha

Whereabouts in ENGLAND were you based?

You didn't go to the Reading festival in 74 or 75 did you - Wishbone Ash were playing?

Speak later
Shirps

At the time of the Suez Canel crisis (late 1973) when because of oil shortages much of Britain was reduced to working a 3-day week, I was pouring petrol at a Datsun (now Nissan) dealership in Amersham (Buckinghamshire). A flat came with the job.

The Aussie owner only employed fellow Aussies and Kiwis. Through another Aussie connection, in contrast to competing petrol stations, we managed to retain a reliable supply of fuel.

To take advantage of this I put together a scheme whereby the more money people spent on accessories the more petrol they would be supplied with. I purchased the accessories from a cash and carry and doubled the price. My share was 50% of the inflated price. Eventually I was making more money per week than the owner. This happy state of affairs financed my trip home

Previous to this I worked, and lived in, various pubs in London. One of the bigger ones was The Wellington in Shepherds Bush. - just across from the Common, midway between the two underground railway stations. On any given Saturday night there would be about 200 Irish and two Kiwis in various states of disrepute.

Alas, I missed the Reading festival. Maybe I was driving my Volkswagen van to the Munich beer festival at the time?

Hi Folks - I'm responding on behalf of Walter, as we are mates in the flesh (so to speak) ... I let him know via email that H2G2 was back up, but he has been pretty busy lately and may not have had a chance to re-activate.

Oh, he isn't at the University of Tasmania ... I am ... an oxymoron indeed! We have intellectual calibre by the convict-shipload down here.

And, to put in my 2 cents, the best apples are of course from Tassie and are of the Royal Gala variety. So there.

Best wishes
Bran the Explorer.

If Tasmanian apples are so great then why are Australian apple growers so determined to keep New Zealand apples out of Aussie supermarkets? I suspect the Aussies are scared of the though of competition.

The tired, protectionist, discredited (at a scientific level), excuse that NZ apples are exposed to fireblight would be laughable if it wasn't so economically harmful to hardworking Kiwi apple growers. If there was anything wrong with NZ apples then I am sure they would be banned from markets like Japan, Europe and the United States of America.

NZ Braeburn apples. The best, the very best, as I may have mentioned earlier

Loony

Let's try that again

I suspect the Aussies are scared of the thought of competition.

Hi again Shirps, and welcome to all our new readers
I went to Reading in... well it must have been either the year before or the year after Wishbone Ash played, and I would've given anything to see them . The year I went, Friday night was topped by 10cc (with The Sensational Alex Harvery Band before), Saturday was Traffic, and Focus on Sunday. Yeah, I'm that old . I think Genesis played the following year, and I'm still kicking myself for not going.
As for the whole apple thing, I'm very partial to Braeburn apples Looneytunes, and it would be nice to try one straight off the tree. Maybe one day when I go to visit my old schoolfriend who now lives in Auckland, who incidentally, was at Reading that year too, and all the other times we went to see SAHB

OK guys, let's not get too personal over this apple converse!

Personally, if I MUST eat a "foreign" apple, from the choice we have in our local supermarket, it is the Braeburn. I agree, wouldn't it be great to eat it fresh from the tree.

Hey, aren't we all showing our ages

I remember 4 of us not meeting up with the friends who were bringing the tent, so we slept the first night under a sheet of polythene - BIG mistake - we were soaked in the morning! The following night, having found the friends &, more importantly, the now erected tent, it poured with rain. I was in the middle & therefore, smugly, didn't get wet when it leaked all round!! Ahhhh, happy days!

The young 'uns don't know how to enjoy themselves properly do they

Wishbone Ash, like most of the bands playing, sounded better if you were back at your tent behind the stage!!! Why did/do they distort music so much, supposed pros are expected to get the balance right, but never quite manage it.

10cc - was that the year they prima donna'ishly kept everyone waiting?

Hi there Bran,

Give Walter my/our regards & ask him to pass them on to Beloved. Tell him we miss him & that I've read about 6 books since we last "spoke"!!!

I was distantly related to a gypsy who couldn't read or write, but my daughter is doing very well at present (I don't want to brag, but, oh hell why not: she got a first (molecular cell biology) & is now doing a Phd in some sort of vaccination subject). Don't ask about my failures though!

So, all those poor old convicts couldn't have been brain dead - at least they had the sense to steal a loaf of bread when they were hungry rather than starve!!!!


Er, what exactly is an "oxymoron" anyway?

Shirps x

Looney

So you're one of these capitalists are you - huh? I better the garage owner copied your idea & started the whole ball rolling

Ahh, the beautiful old VW van. A friend of ours still has one running, each year he talks of getting rid of it, but no it keeps on rolling along!!

My other half has a VW campervan - a modern thing without the character of the old vans, but very useful: has a Merc got a porta-potti or a gas stove?

Hmmm, I don't particularly recall 10cc keeping us all waiting, not like Paul Weller and The Syle Council did when we saw them at Brockwell Park in Brixton that time - they went on an hour and a half after the previous act (Hazel O'Connor I think), so they only had time to do two songs. Grrr.
Funny you should mention the tent and the rain - There were four of us going that year, but one of us couldn't leave London until he got off work at 4.30, and he had the good tent. We couldn't find him on the Friday, so three of us got very little sleep in a one-man pup tent which was later described as a "fully permeable wind tunnel". The weather was great the rest of the weekend though until late Sunday night, and I got horribly sunburned (didn't realise how awful I looked until I got home and looked in a mirror for the first time in 3 days). I also got whacked on the head by a flying beercan (not empty), and the first thing I did when I got home was to visit the local army surplus store and buy an old ARP helmet for next year

Indeed the Volkswagon campervan brings back good memories.

Usually when we were touring around there were two couples, three Kiwis and an Aussie. At night one couple slept in the fully-fitted (70s style) van and the other couple erected a tent nearby. The next night the couple who had slept in the van slept in the tent.

I found that drinking plenty of rough red wine - straight from the leather pouch slung around my neck - protected me from the elements when it was my turn to sleep in the tent

Looneytunes, I don't know if you've been back since your OE, but these days there's a plethora of free magazines for Aussies, Kiwis, and now also S Africans, and before I came here to Texas, I spent the previous 12 years delivering one of them - TNT. I was out there every Sunday night (and later on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday too) come rain or shine (if there's such a thing as shine at 2am ), dropping off bundles of them at all the watering holes, travel agents, employment agencies, and and tube stations around London where there were plenty of OE-ers. TNT evolved from.... dang, I forget. There was LAM, then TNT, then Southern Cross, then LAM went bust and became LAW... it was quite a saga, and it's still running. And now every Sunday I thank the lord that I don't have to go out to work at midnight when my body is screaming that it's bedtime and the rain is bouncing off the road. That I don't have to sit there for three hours twiddling my thumbs because the dickheads at the printers screwed up again, knowing that I'll be so late finishing that I'm gonna get tangled up in the morning rush hour traffic. That I can go out for a drink at Sunday lunchtime, and, oh joy, on Sunday evening once again. That's my favourite evening of the whole week to go out on now, just cos I can TNT has been a phenomenal success for the bloke who published it, to the extent that he sold it to some big publisher last year for several million. I won't tell you what I think of him for his business practices , and the 'token of appreciation' he gave to the bloke who had the contract for delivering TNT , who sweated blood each week to see that it was on the streets, whose dedication to getting it out on the streets was a big part of its success, and to whom I sub-contracted, because it'll be moderated out for sure.