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

"Flowers mean forgiveness", I heard a poet say...

I hope you haven't deserted the MC boards forever, Polly. You really shouldn't get so upset about what AHL says. Or what I say, come to that.
I didn't mean to be unkind (you know that was the last thing on my mind).

Thank you, W4aT, for your message.


I hurt easily. I'm very emotional.

I do get a bit mixed up(sometimes) with my words. It's called STRESS. I don't often try to be silly! And that last lim, or sex, that AHL was nasty about, was an example of my NOT seeing that I had posted anything wrong. I did very little wrong anyway. In fact, he himself has done just the same thing.

There are certain folk on the MB that I am close to. I haven't liked AHL calling SC a stupid name. But SC-being SC, has taken it 'like a man'. I really respect SC....

Anyway, W4aT, thanks for your message. When I had posted that I cried, I really had meant that I had cried. There is no need for me to fib....


Polly

Polly,

I really don't think SC minds one bit about AHL calling him 'Fatso' and I'm sure he enjoys jousting with him. The two of them are a bit like Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau in The Odd Couple. They're keeping the 'rick and 'tuplet boards going almost by themselves now (with a little bit of help from Rikii), but I imagine SC would love to see you back there.

I like SC, too. He's rather anarchic, which can be irritating, but usually in a clever, funny way, which makes me forgive him. The word that springs to mind is 'irascible'.


'tickle

Hi, Polly.
In spite of all those beers you sent, I never divulged my prize winning limerick. The thing is, I could only remember the first line. By the time I found my copy of the in-house magazine, the thread had closed. Mind you, when I read it again, I realised why I couldn't remember the rest - it's rubbish (the first line, at least, had some nice alliteration). Before I tell it, I should point out that in IT circles at the time, the jargon for the year 2000 was Year 2k or Y2k. So, here goes:-

A Y2K coder called Kate
Went to work on a very old date.
"You are too small, I fear,
And the time's getting near -
Let's enlarge you before it's too late."

Well it has made me smile, W4aT! I guess one can put their own interpretation on it!! What was the prize for your limerick? Sorry if you have already told us.

Thank you for bothering to copy it out for me.

I felt so flipping big-headed last night after a daft comment of mine about the lines from poems(pomes). I do apologise for such a crass statement. A glass of wine maybe?

I don't think there's any need to apologize, Polly. A glass of wine would be nice, but I'm only allowed to drink water tonight. I'm taking part in a study into the effects of food and vegetable consumption on risk factors for heart disease and it's my first intervention visit tomorrow morning, prior to which I have to fast. So guess what? Eldest daughter's boyfriend, who is staying with us temporarily, arrived 'home' from work about half an hour ago with a bottle of wine, looking for someone to share it with. Talk about bad timing.

BTW, do you ever sneak your own compositions into the snog threads? I've tried it once or twice to see if anyone would notice, but I guess everyone is too polite to comment even if they did. I suppose it's naughty of me, really.

Glad the lim made you smile. The prize was a bottle of champagne.

No, I have never tried to put one of my own creations on the snogs thread! I wonder what yours were! Seems like a great(and amusing) idea. I do love giving recitations, though. And any friend who visits me usually has to listen to some good poetry!

Are you unwell, W4aT? I do hope not. Maybe it is just a thingamybob(can't think of the word). Pardon my asking.

Coo--champagne. Funny how some folk just don't like the stuff. I love it!

I'm so tired tonight. I seem to be constantly weary since the accident.

More fun on the solo lim thread!


's

Polly, I'm afraid I do suffer from a rather nasty, although very common affliction. It's called poverty. I volunteered to take part in this study because I get free fruit and veg for 4 or 5 months, a small honorarium and a free health check, but it's also quite interesting. As far as I'm aware, I'm fitter than a fiddle, and I'm hoping this study will confirm that.

Sounds like I ought to look in on the solo lim thread. You'd better have this.

Dear W4aT, I am suffering from a similar problem.

Seriously though, I am glad that you are otherwise well. Free fruit and veg? Golly, that seems a great way of being paid. I don't very often listen to CFM, but a few weeks ago they were advertising for folk to take part in some kind of trials. I did wonder....But decided I didn't want to be a guinea-pig!!!

There were(I thought) some funny lims tonight on that particular thread! AHL did post one that made me laugh even though it was unkind towards someone.

Anyway, take care tomorrow. I must away to my nest. I'm hoping to do some serious walking tomorrow.

Goodnight dear friend.

Polly

xx

PS

Thank you for the wine(or was it champers?) Thank you anyway.

PPS !!

Just in case you wish to know(if you don't already), the modded post was from mykle. It contained one dubious word! And the reason that I started a lim with something about being 'short and sweet' was because mykle asked for directions to the one-liner lims that he said are "short and sweet".

What a load of nonsense on R4 at the moment. Must get it turned off!

'Night 'Night

Hi Polly,

Hope you're not feeling too fed up. Please accept my apologies for spying on you, but I want to assure you that you didn't incur my wrath tonight - I spoke in sorrow, not in anger. And thank you for not telling me, or anyone else, where to go. I think that's a good sign, really. AHL wasn't quite so restrained, of course: apparently I have gone from 'kindred spirit' to 'wally' in the space of a few short days. Still, it's all part of life's rich tapestry. "Today's teardrops are tomorrow's rainbows.."

AHL says that you and he are friends again. I'd like to think that were true - I hope it is true - but somehow I have my doubts. Maybe the pair of you could gang up on me. That might be the answer.
"'Cause everybody's gotta have somebody to look down on
Who they can feel better than at any time they please
Someone doin' somethin' dirty decent folks can frown on
If you can't find nobody else, then help yourself to me."

Dear W4aT,

Thank you for the message.

Did I say that that person is my 'friend'? I sent him 2 hugging smileys 'cos I thought it would show him that I do not care to argue. But it just made things worse for me.

Yes I was upset at your post telling me and 'him' to go elsewhere. For weeks now he has kept on and on at me. Apparently, SC and I are "well suited to each other". Then I have got my own "coterie". Then everything I dare to say is wrong somehow.

I'm a very friendly person, W4aT. I can't help adding little things to certain folk. That is just 'ME'!

I hope you are joking about myself and 'him' "ganging up" on you! I am NOT like that.

Thank you anyway for your apology. Of-course I accept it.

Polly

Hi Polly,

If/when you've got your 'puter working properly again, please come back to us on the pome thread. It's going fairly well, in spite of some eccentric contributions from Stout and Agnar, but it would be so much better if you joined in. Thut seems to be very well versed - and peege, too - but I've forgotten most of the little poetry I ever knew (which is why I have to keep quoting W F A Tickle), so we would really welcome your erudite input.

There's nothing wrong with a bit of chit-chat - or friendly banter - and even our mutual friend doesn't object to it that much, as long as it's accompanied by an appropriate posting. Not that it really matters whether he objects or not, anyway.

Take care,

Thank you for the message W4aT. I have only just noticed it.

I DO get upset every time I am 'ticked-off'. I had been happy on the thread in question because I was literally brought-up on poetry, and with a Poet as a parent. I can't help but notice that there IS plenty of 'idle' chatter (apart from mine) without nastiness! I am really thoroughly fed up with being told-off. Most of my mini-conversations DID tie in somewhere with the lines I had quoted.

Anyway, thank you for your kind words. Again!

Have a happy weekend~~what is remaining of it.

Polly

Hi Polly,

Sorry you're having so many probs with your pc. Is it to do with AVG? If so, have you looked at the AVG forums? Maybe you need to do a repair. The page at http://www.avgforums.com/viewtopic.php?start=0&t=38 may be relevant, especially the message posted by cenoxo on 14 Jan 2008, which also has a link to the AVG Free Advisor. Or am I barking up the wrong tree?

Hope you get it sorted soon, either way, as we miss you. Good luck.

Dear W4aT,

Thank you SO much for bothering to leave that link, and for your message. It is so very kind of you.
I have no idea what is wrong with my computer , but my AVG isn't working at all. My mail is hard to collect. And everything is so painfully slow. I also wasn't able to do something tonight which I always can do normally (can't remember what it was though!).

I shall find that AVG forum tomorrow. I didn't know that anything like it existed.

Thank you so much for all your kind words. They do mean a lot to me. They don't go unnoticed.

'Night 'Night dear W4aT.

Polly
xxx

Hi Polly,

It was good to see you on the pome thread again, even if our posts did keep crossing. That 'heart' link was problematic, though, since it raised so many options. I thought of Fafaia straight away because it's one of my favourites - my preference is for short poems which rhyme and are profoundly simple and/or simply profound - but I've quoted it before and thought I really ought to think of something else. I even considered posting one of my own anguished adolescent attempts at poetry, which for some reason has lodged in my brain (To stay alive I write my living death, Because some vital part of me, Perhaps the very heart of me, Longs to survive, Still loves each painful breath), but decided in the end to go with my first instinct. It wouldn't have taken so long if, in my search for inspiration, I hadn't knocked over a bottle of wine - didn't spill much, luckily, but there was some mopping up to do.

It has been a mild day here, humid, still and cloudy, with a hint of rain. When I went outside a little while ago, the air was filled with the wonderful, sweet, aroma that we get in England at this time of year on this kind of evening. Do you know the one I mean? It's a mingling of scents, I suppose; heavy and heady, moist and green, redolent of springtime and new growth. I can't really describe it - it would take a poet to do that - but it's strangely evocative (of what I'm not quite sure) like the smell of a Sugar Puffs packet or Imperial Leather in someone else's bathroom. I wonder if there is a poem which captures it.

Enough of my waffle. Is your computer any better? Did you look at that forum? There are lots of such things on the web: sometimes they're helpful, sometimes they're not; sometimes they're beyond comprehension.

Anyway, it's time I turned in.

Take care.

Hello dear W4aT.
What a beautifully poetic message. I would LOVE to read more of your verse. The little you have quoted above is really quite delightful. Do please honour me with some more. )


I know exactly what you mean about the evocotive fragrance of Spring. Along the coastline, gorse grows in profusion. This year it is incredible. The yellow flowers are so numerous and lush. But I had never really noticed the heady perfume from gorse until a few weeks ago. It was when I had my dear Canadian visiter with me. We walked along the coastline, and sat on a grassy bank beside a tow-path, in the warm sunshine. The smell from the gorse was intoxicating. We were enveloped in a musty, coconutty smell that was dense and almost narcotic. It was amazing. Each time I recall that day-of-days I can smell that deep perfume. Oooh.

The other smell that is extremely evocotive of childhood is of rain. That earthy perfume takes me back to pac-a-mac days! And to 2ounces of warm greasy peanuts in a paper bag in Woolworths! I can remember being in Woolworths with my Mother and brother, and the rain outside. Folk in those days wore pac-a-macs, although we didn't possess such things. My darling brother was often 'treated' to warm peanuts (would such a thing make todays children happy I wonder!!). I loved that smell of rain even when I was a child.


My slow computer makes the 'pome' thread hard for me. I am likely to post a few lines far too late! I do apologise, though, for any words that are hard to follow. I don't like leaving anything too obscure yet I have managed that very well since re-joining!

I hope your weekend was a happy one. I guess it is onwards now to high-summer. And the Proms ofcourse.


Another glorious day here.


Polly

Hi Polly,

Thanks for your message and your kind words regarding my verse. 'Verse' is a very useful term, it covers a multitude of sins.

When I was young and dysfunctional, I used to write snippets of 'poetry', although I suppose most of them were probably too short even to be called verses: fragments might be a better term. Like the one I quoted yesterday or the one I posted on the pome thread not so long back (These eyes have looked on beauty and have cried, Such sights no man should see they have descried, But they have looked too long, ay me, and died). Somewhere in the dark recesses of our loft there is probably a book or two with such things scribbled in, but I doubt it would be worth seeking them out - "there are some things for which youth is no excuse". Maybe, when I reach my second childhood, I will read them again and marvel at them.

I did progress to writing longer pieces at a later date, but these were conceived as songs - or 'hums' to use Winnie-the Pooh's term. (This is a very good excuse for bad poetry.) I posted one of my better efforts on the snog thread in mid-December, since it was a Christmas song. (In my dreams I make a recording of it and it becomes the surprise Christmas No. 1, making me enough money to pay off all my debts. ) But it was written over 10 years ago and I haven't written very much since.

Now that I am middle-aged (and even more dysfunctional), I have more or less given up writing of any kind. Tradition has it that, when we go on our summer holiday, I write a postcard to my aunt in rhyme, so I do produce one piece of doggerel a year, but that's about it. Mind you, the one before the last was quite good of its kind, although more for the subject matter than the writing. Perhaps I'll share it with you sometime.

A few years ago, my youngest daughter's primary school teacher circulated a book in which parents were asked to write an account of a childhood holiday. I decided to do one in rhyme, although in prose format - I never did find out if anyone noticed. It went something like this:-

Many, many years ago, before the sixties swang (when a beetle was something you trod on and not a small car you might prang), one summer my father decided that, rather than go to Skegness, we should go on a foreign holiday – to somewhere near Haverfordwest. We set off in our old Austin Cambridge, my parents, my sister and I, on this long and adventurous journey, with no proper map to go by. It took us so long to get there (and not just because it’s so far, but because we got lost in the darkness) that we spent the first night in our car. I remember we passed by Port Talbot – more than once if my memory is right: it looked like the Tower of Mordor, with the furnaces burning so bright. Next morning we got to the farmhouse my father had booked for our stay, and after a gruelling journey like that, we needed a holiday. I remember the farmer’s daughter, raven hair and apple-red cheeks, and the earwig in my cereal bowl that put me off cornflakes for weeks. Pendine Sands were vast and deserted (and famous for what there occurred), fantastic for kicking a football around, but completely devoid of bluebirds. We went on a daytrip to Tenby, where it rained, as it usually does, but the view from the tower at St. David’s gave us all a bit of a buzz. (Or perhaps we were simply light-headed, for it is quite a breath-taking climb, and my memory’s not as good as it was; still I think the view was sublime.) It was whilst we were on this vacation I first managed to master a bike - it belonged to the farmer’s son, Henry, a boy that I didn’t much like. He was ‘horrid’, quite unlike his sister, the girl who is mentioned above, whose name, I’m afraid, now escapes me, but with whom I fell madly in love. Now it seems like another lifetime, for I’ve long since left childhood behind, and I’ve been to more exotic places – but that earwig still sticks in my mind!

I know it's not the kind of verse you had in mind, but it's just for fun. For some reason, the m-i-l rather likes it, but I think perhaps it needs a bit of work. Still, it was dashed off in the wee small hours, so what can you expect?

Goodness, I do go on, don't I? It must be the effects of alcohol deprivation - I've not had a drop all day. Or maybe it's because I didn't really get to go on the MBs tonight, on account of spending too long in ASDA looking for bargains.

You're right about the smell of rain and I, too, remember pac-a-macs - but not, I'm afraid those warm greasy peanuts from Woolworths (how that's changed over the years). I think young children still do enjoy simple things, but too many of them are allowed, encouraged, incited to 'grow up' too soon - and in the worst ways. As for the 'narcotic' aroma of gorse, that's something I've never experienced.

'Twas a glorious day here, too - weatherwise, at least. Let's hope this summer is rather better than the last one. We keep promising ourselves a trip to the proms, but we can't really afford to go to concerts - other than the ones in which our daughters perform, of course: they put a big enough dent in our finances.

I've gone on far too long. I'll just mention that you can view one of my 'hums' on my personal space. I sing it it to a jolly, lilting tune and it's meant to cheer me up, but it doesn't always work.

Take care