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

Shouldn't be a problem.

This is not a dirty trick.

Will provide a little insight into what dogs use their vibrissae for.

Is stroking a spaniard's ears not a minor pleasure? Or do we risk being Yikesed lest we expand?

Playing with my Basset Hound's giant ears is a very frequent minor pleasure of the entire family's.

She does however take umbrage when our other dog things they should be nibbled on

thinks*

Collecting all the bits of shrapnel after cutting my toenails.

Often includes nail clipper fragments with mine.

Surgical steel just doesn't turn the trick when tool steel is required.

Picking the stone out of a ripe juicy peach and then just stuffing the rest into your mouth, best done in private

Spitting cherry stones.

PP.

Cleaning the wheels on my mechanical mouse with my fingernail.

PP.

I love finishing a book and then choosing what I'm going to read next. What did we do before charity shops made such a huge variety of books available really cheaply? If anyone wants to know I started Claire Tomalin's Charles Dickens, a Life today, just looking, it cost £9.99 new and it was only published a couple of years ago, I got it from our local hospice shop £1, and I'll take it back to the shop so they can sell it on when I've read it.

Listening to Round the Horne in bed on Tuesday mornings. (I don't think there's been a funnier radio show and it's been going since the 1960's), I know the scripts better than Kenneth Williams!

It's the great Wallingford Bunkfest this weekend, a big old beery folkfest, and it's free, the music that is, not the beer! What I wanted to say is I love the Morris music, the tunes they get out of those little concertina thingys is amazing, I wish they weren't quite so vigorous bashing their sticks together, quite scary that but they really cheer the place up.

Getting a little bargain, I just bought a monitor at a charity shop for a fiver, I'd had my old one, first generation of flatscreens I reckon, one from my first desktop, must be 10 years old at least, the lady in the shop insisted I take my receipt and bring it back if it didn't work! But no fear, much improved picture, aren't there some good folk around?

Being near a horsechestnut tree when one of the conker cases drops. If lucky, you get the chance to see it burst open on impact with the ground.

If you're unlucky you feel it burst open on impact with your head.

Dude, I grew up with bramley apples often nearly the size of my head threatening to fall on it for a couple of months of each year.

Compared to that, avoiding ripe conkers is easy and riskfree.

Having the house to myself occasionally.

Listening to Round the Horne and anticipating the innuendoes, I know the shows so well after about 45 years of listening!

You know those wrought iron gates from the 50's and 60's, they
look like the sun with rays coming off them, often in front of houses called things like Dunroamin, or Edelweiss, or Bali Hi. I often look at them and wonder about the young marrieds proudly moving in to their lovely suburban semis way back then. I'm not mocking, I grew up on a council estate in Gateshead, they were what I aspired to, in fact I've got the semi but not the gates! I just like that bit of tweeness that's all, I still like Lobelia and Alyssum as well, and Coronation Chicken, and Biggles Books. Chocks away chaps!!!!!

I know I'm probably writing to myself here but I found a picture of the kind of gates I'm talking about above. There are also double ones that go across driveways. In Cowley, Oxford there's lots of them that look a bit homemade, and none the worse for that. I reckon the Cowley workers smuggled them out of the car works 'one piece at a time' in the good old Johnny Cash fashion and put them together at home, I'm sure Lord Morris wouldn't have minded, he was well into the Arts and Craft movement. http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=sunshine+design+on+iron+entrance+gate+photo&view=detailv2&qpvt=sunshine+design+on+iron+entrance+gate+photo&id=1452AC8F83AFE7C61E96CC6AB1789CB586FCF658&selectedIndex=1&ccid=i8VdIiEG&simid=608018033868801361&thid=OIP.M8bc55d2221065e81415bb6c4369fe08bo0&ajaxhist=0

That nice crunchy feel and sound a snowball makes when you're forming it in your hands.