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

having just read KB's similarly (identically, in fact) titled new journal F1886503?thread=8309522 and not wanting to steal his thunder...

For me, heaven would constantly be about 7pm on a warm Monday evening (got to be Monday) in late June with the sun shining, a few cotton wool clouds in the sky, England having just beaten Australia in the third Test to take a 3-0 lead in the series, Wimbledon just started (and the courts still looking pristine), the Tour de France and the Proms to look forward to, and me sitting outside a pub somewhere in Essex, not unlike this one http://map.google.co.uk/maps?ll=51.6484,0.168534&spn=0.003112,0.008256&t=h&z=18&layer=c&cbll=51.648307,0.168479&panoid=ULNGenEcHJINalm81bFIHg&cbp=12,64.69,,0,2.81 , drinking some decent beer with a few mates, or perhaps a sweetheart , thinking about going home later to catch John Peel's show or perhaps the latest episode of Hitchhikers Guide, and not a care in the world.

Oh, I just made myself

No, make that the second Test at Lord's

From one expat to another: ditto

me three *chin chin*

A little warning Sho - don't read post 1 again or you'll be having people in the office asking if someone's died.

in between teasing me about the England footie team you mean?

Ah, yes, sorry if I made things a bit, shall we say, emotional for anyone this morning

On reflection, I think this should actually be more of a Groundhog Day thing. It would always be Monday, it would always be in late June, I'd have had the day off (because it's so nice waking up on Monday morning knowing you don't have to go to work), and I'd have actually been *at* Lord's watching the cricket. Without the looping day, in other words if it was always 7pm, I'd never get to hear John Peel or the Hitchhikers Guide.

We have an Italian and Portuguese in the office, so I'm not getting all the teasing. In fact no one has mentioned it yet.

John Peel - I consider myself very privileged to have heard his early programmes on Radio London.

The reception was lousy in my part of the world, but, of course, I listened to the embryonic Radio 1, which took over Radio London's schedule almost one to one.

Life would have been very different without John Peel. I left the country before the Hitchhikers started, and in those days of Long, Medium and Short waves, and no way of knowing what was on the Radio, that was something I never got to hear.

Ah, Big L "Here's yours truly, with the weather!".

I remember it fondly, although I was too young to stay up late enough for the Perfumed Garden. I'd listen to it all the time during the school hols though. So much so that my parents got me a little tranny for my birthday one year, and I have a very clear memory of listening to it while we were at Southend one day. Here's a few memories

I came to Peel only after he joined Radio - my first definite memory of him is the night he played the new Tangerine Dream LP - Phaedra - in its entirety. I went out and bought it a few days later. I still have, stashed in a box in the bedroom.

I didn't start listening to him regularly until the late 70s, so I missed out on his early punk programmes, but from around 1978 on I listened to him almost religiously. Probably 70% of my record collection, and 95% of my singles, are down to listening to John Peel.

I taped so many of his shows between about 1980 and 1984 And then taped over most of them, after pulling off some of the tunes I thought it'd be good to keep

Thankfully, several people were smarter than me and kept their tapes. The John Peel Wiki http://peel.wikia.com/wiki/John_Peel_Wiki has links to download several of them.

I was listening to the show the night he first played a session from a couple of kids - brother and sister - who put together a demo tape at home and sent it in to him. He had Bill Nelson in the studio that night and they were both mightily impressed with what they were hearing. Peely said at the end that they'd made an old man very happy.

I know I've explained this before in other conversations, but I never get tired of listening to Sophie and Peter Johnson. Thankfully, it's one session that I did keep, although the rest of the programme was taped over, and thankfully someone's uploaded it to YouTube It sounds as fresh now as it did 30 years ago.

(Fades in a bit, hope I'm playing it at the right speed ) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fksKHVwImk

Oh, I made myself again. Must stop doing that.

Ah, yes. When I say "Here's a few memories", what I actually mean is "Here's a few memories http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRh4-Iugkpg"

John Peel used to do a one hour weekly show for BFBS back in the late 70s early 80s, so I went from daily listening (instead of revising for A-levels) to a weekly show. I worked evenings or was out with my boyfriend so my mum used to record it for me. Originally she put the tape in (a C60) and ran up after 30 minutes and turned it over and then went back to doing what she had been doing, but one day she listened to something he was staying and listened to the rest of the show. After that she listened while she recorded it for me.

We were together in the car driving home from shopping when it was announced on the radio that he'd died, and we had a bit of a tearful reminiscence about those times. We used the same tape over and over (because I took the songs I wanted off that tape and put them elsewhere) and I'm sorry we didn't make a new one each week.

But what I am really sorry not to have managed to record and keep were the one minute trailers he did for the show, which were fantastic little works of art.

You can find a load of them here, Sho http://peel.wikia.com/wiki/BFBS

The process is a bit weird - if you want to download any of the mp3s you have to click on one of the links and scroll to the bottom of that show's page where you'll find a link called Mooo next to where it says 'Available'. When you do that a login window will open, and the window tells you what the login details are http://peel.wikia.com/wiki/Mooo_Server Just don't grab a whole load of them all at once - spread it out a bit.

I'll have to think long and hard about if I want to listen to them (but thanks for the link!) because I break out into horribly overblown nostalgia and "whatiffery" about what I did back then that I shouldn't have done. It can either be or (oh wait, this is Gosho's journal I must be careful here) or...

(did I get away with it?)

I think so