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

A friend of mine has a house in Italy. He tries to spend as much of his holidays as possible there. It's in a tiny village in the mountains near Pisa. The village has a restaurant and a church, but no shop. Like many Italian villages, it's built on a hill; the road into the village is so steep that it is quite a tricky task to get a car up it to park at the little car park beside the church. It's easier to leave the car at the bottom of the hill in the other car park and walk up.

When my friend moved in first, he was surprised that his house had no number. He asked how the postman would find him. He was told that since there are only about 100 houses in the village, the postman knows everybody. He said that he would like to have a number on his house and asked one of the local workmen, who was doing some renovation work on the house, to go about buying a number for the house.

The workman said "What number would you like?" Since none of the houses had a number, he could take his pick. My friend said that the house must have had a number at some point in its life, so they did some research and found the actual number of the house. It was 42. How fitting.

I took a photo of my friend's house number, and I've asked the Editors to put it on the 42 Entry.

Marvelous!!

What a charming tale! Just sounds the stuff to relate whilst sitting in the house sharing some

I look forward to seeing quarantadue. What's "The meaning of life, the universe and everything" in Italian?

I live at 42 too. The council were threatening to renumber our road and we'd have been changed to #19 which is definitely not as good

We sold two flats when we bought this, both number 21, so 42 feels right for all sorts of reasons!

The village my ex-in-laws live in has a wonderful system...

The house number is the distance, in metres, from the centre of the village to the letterbox of the house in question...

I can't remember where I read this; it might have been Neil Gaiman's book about the Hitchhikers' series. Anyway, one of the possible 'origin stories' for 42 is a former residence of Douglas Adams. (I've never read or heard that he supported this theory.) From memory, I want to say 42 was the house number he had for a brief time in London, possibly during his early days at BBC? Or maybe it was in college?

Ugh... My 42+ year old memory was never much to begin with. I'll try to remember to flip through that book when I get home.

Anyway, the important part is that at some point well before writing Hitchhikers, Douglas Adams actually did live at a house numbered 42.

A19229763

Nice.

Yes, that is much nicer than my ugly wrist.
http://picasaweb.google.com/Countxirho/Misc#5400077571633247458

Thanks for directing us here, Gnomon. I found one link in the entry mentioned above which doesn't work. It's the reference to "Tower 42". I would also like to bet that whatever Tower 42 is, it isn't the tallest building in London any more, as the entry dates from 14 March 2007.

Who should I point this out to?

I believe the tallest building in London, and also in Europe, is called "The Shard".

You can point changes like this out at Feedback / Editorial. Just start a conversation, give it a title starting with EF: and report the change you want, remembering to include the A number of the entry in the posting so that the editors can quickly find it and make the change.

It's usually Bluebottle that sorts this sort of thing out.

The entry was well behind the times even when written. Tower 42 was the tallest building in the UK from 1980-1991, then it was overtaken by One Canada Square (Canary Wharf) - the one with the sloping roof until 2012, when The Shard took over. The Shard is over 30% higher than One Canada Square - it's a monster. Tower 42 is currently 7th in the list:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_buildings_in_the_United_Kingdom

I've notified them. Whoever "they" are!

all fixed

GB (not BB)