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

Just you wait though, in a few years garden centres will be selling hunks of space debris instead of gnomes and meerkats

When it comes right down to it, we are all space debris.

*nods sagely*

>>in a few years garden centres will be selling hunks of space debris

You can't sell this debris though, NASA claim it's theirs.

if they drop it in my garden then it's mine. just ask the kids whose footballs i'm making a nice collection of.

PH: Doing damage control. Ugh. If you’re stupid enough to do what you did, don’t be surprised if I pull EVERY LITTLE THING I FIND.

PH II: when there's only a few days to go til something massive and you haven't even packed yet oh goddd why do I never have enough time?!

Anna, you have plenty of time - just you wait a few decades, eh? ...

For some reason, I found myself listing PHs on the way to work this morning.

As much as I absolutely love September - it's my favourite month - at this time of the year the sun seems to be facing you wherever you go. Especially, of course, in the morning and the evening on my way to work and on the way back. It's bad enough on my bike, but when driving (we were out in the car at the weekend) it's blinding, and every tiny smear on the windscreen is amplified and dangerously opaque.

I was doing a detour through the village because the Post Office has moved back into the village (another PH - it was nice and central before, between the old and the new part of the village, now it's a helluva hike.)

PH: postage prices in Germany .......The postage has now changed so that all letters abroad cost the same. For a while it used to be the same for all EU countries (I think), including Germany. For many years it was separate - there were three rates: for inland, Europe and rest-of-the-world. Now I have to pay the same for Strasbourg (3/4 hour by road), Spain (2 hours by plane) or Singapore - on the other side of the world.

The blurb on the Deutsche Post website says <> Oh yeah. Der.

And the men digging the road outside our house are making a right mess. They're going to be breaking through into our laundry room in the cellar this afternoon. At least they're laying new electricity and water supply lines simultaneously and not digging up the road twice in short succession, as has been the case before. Apparently they're doing something with the gas, too.

And our cable TV was cut off. But the road diggers say it wasn't them. Especially as our neighbour lost his reception too, and they haven't started digging outside his house yet. So now I can moan about the cable company.

Mmm . . . in Ireland the postal rates have been that way for years, only costlier: 55c for an internal card or letter, 85c for anywhere else, from Britain to Tierra del Fuego.

As you say, Der.

PH: people who use the last of the tablets in a blister pack, but still leave the now empty strip in the medicine cabinet, so that you THINK you have some ibuprofen, but when you actually go to get one, you don't really.

The fact the iphone is locked to o2. Im sorry but that&#39;s total crap! I have to bring another phone and that&#39;s not a problem but oh god putting software on the laptop uuuuuuuuuuuuuugggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhh damn. I want my iphone!

Moving- stress. Magners later. To calm down, natch.

PH 2: WHY CAN&#39;T I REMEMBER MY POLISH OH GOD I DON&#39;T REMEMBER HOW TO ASK FOR A LETTER SENT AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGHHHHHHHHHH!

My PHoD is reading that Germany/Ireland's postal rates are so simple ... while knowing full well that every time I try to send *anything* other than a normal letter it will entail me queueing in the post office for 20+ mins ...

Those simple Irish postal rates *only* apply to letters and cards. You queue to have everything else weighed and measured

Colleagues who use your desk to open the mail when you're off - and decide they don't like how things are arranged so move things around.

She even moved the key to my drawer - I spent 5 minutes looking for it this morning.

Deb

Hmm. I use a letter opener. Each to their own

Maybe the formica's peeling off along one edge?

Toybox, you made me choke on my lunch with that!

Deb

Two petty hates today. One's really petty, the other is a safety thing, so it's not really a petty hate.

PH #1: Toilet paper (or kitchen towels) where the perforations don't go all the way along the sheet, so you end up with part of the sheet you want still on the roll.

PH #2: Drivers who seem to have a problem with pulling out to pass pedestrians on country roads. I like to go for walks on the country roads near my home. Most drivers are OK, pulling out well in advance and passing well clear of me. There are a few, however, who don't pull out until the last minute and/or pass so close that I could touch the car. Yes, I could step onto the grass verge but it's full of dog poo (and the occasional cow pat) and in some places stepping out of the way means climbing into the hedge.

I should point out that I'm not talking about single track country lanes. These roads are at least as wide as those in a town, they just don't have nice paved areas for pedestrians to walk.

CD, you use 'last minute' rather loosely. People do the same talking about music. What they (and I expect you) really mean is nearer to the last hundredth of a second.

there's another stupid add for ready-made Yorkshire puddings where some "apparently Yorkshire women" are complaining that a working mum is giving her family Yorkshire puddings (well, not really Yorkshire puddings...) with Chicken.

Whereas any fule kno real Yorkshire people:
a) eat the pudding before the mean
and
2) eat puddings with everything
and
iii) make big ones in huge tins, not silly little things like that