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

Oops.
Got confused and posted that in the wrong place.
I'll be back in a little while to answer you sensibly.

(Just don't ask.)

I am sorry about that.
I had too many windows open and got confused.
Anyway.

My dad rang me up this morning to tell me he couldn't work on my car as planned as he had to go and search for petrol.
I hope he manages to find some. As a taxi driver as well, he needs it.
People panic buying are ridiculous. At least my car takes LRP and should be more plentiful, but I can just walk or get a bus if I need to. My parents need their cars to work.
I did notice that the fuel prices went down, as all of a sudden the taxi got a LOT cheaper to fill up, so I am not really sure what's going on.
I'm not really into politics, so I can't agree or disagree with you. I really have no idea what the EU is or does. I probably should, but I don't, and I'm happy like that.

My ex has been my ex for 3 years now. He definitely needs a life of his own. When he sees J he shuts everone else out, so J is getting an over-inflated sense of his own importance.
Pagans have something called "hand-fasting". It's marriage, but only for a limited period. A year and a day, and it can be renewed again, or not. My friend still sees her ex-husband, it is much more amicable than my split, and the only way I would ever consider marriage again.
(Obviously it does not include the civil ceremony.)

I have no more time for pagans than for any other religious group, but tradition is a different matter. Hand-clasping, or even jumping over the broom, sound perfectly sensible.
At some point in the not too distant future you will be eligible to vote in a referendum on monetary union. Your choice, or failure to make a choice, will affect the future prospects of millions of people, not least yourself and your son. I urge you to take a reasoned view on this matter one way or the other, even if you ignore all other political activity. There are some very informative websites about this issue - I will send you the address of one - although most of them are biased one way or the other. Here endeth the lesson. Apart from the website I will never raise the matter again.
News Flash - Huddersfield Petrol Drought is absolute. Not a drop of lead free or diesel within ten miles - apart from Hartshead Moor Motorway Services which nobody can get to because it's on the M62!
Ah well, back to work. It is the monthly 'Ass Kicking Meeting' tomorrow, when the MD berates us for not having achieved the impossible. I cannot wait.

I'll look into it then, as it seems to be really important.

I just got an email from my mum telling me that I can't work on Thursday due to the petrol shortage, and possibly not Saturday night. Which would be disatrous for me. Although I could go out, which would make a nice change. I think there is LRP around, so I might suggest that she has the car altered back to take leaded for a while.
I think it will be an excuse for people to skip work.
What would be sensible is if everyone GOT ON A BUS! Then the fuel would go further. But no, there are just as many people on the roads. Ridiculous.
Enjoy your meeting. Don't you get berated for browsing this site?

Not while I produce a reasonable quantity of work and give the business the benefit of my ineffable wisdom - and modesty. And now I had better do some of said work.

That sounds reasonable.

Hello again. I survived the Ass-kicking meeting with few bruises and £8K to spend on new Gizmos for the company - if there is a company when all of our raw materials fail to materialise and our products cease to be produced. I have just been informed that Huddersfield taxi drivers are going to blockade the ring road at 16.00 today.I cannot say that I blame them, although I wonder how they get the petrol to get to the ring road! I just hope that they get fed up and go home by 18.30 when I collect my daughter from the swimming pool.
I have been told that I have to attend a conference at Harlow in November - is that your part of the world? I am unashamed to confess that I have never before been to Harlow.
Re my earlier soap box message, I suggest the following address as a beginning - http://www.keele.ac.uk/socs/ks40/gb1.htm
It seems a long time ago now, but do you remember the eclipse in the Summer of last year? I started to write a poem then and I have just polished it up a bit..

What will our awestruck children say
Of darkness on this Summer's day?
When we are gone will they recall
This vigil on a hill.
Will they recall, as souvenirs,
These moments in their early years,
Their parents watching over them -
And will they love us still?

Will they grow tall and wise and strong?
Live lives of glory, full and long?
Will they stand thirty years from now as we stand on this hill?
Will they have children in their care
And think, as I do standing here,
Of parents watching over them -
And will they love us still?

A bit mawkish perhaps?

Thanks for the web site, I have been inspecting (and trying to understand)it.
I loved your poem, it really made me think, and I even felt a bit weepy thinking of my son growing up.
We don't seem too bad for petrol down here, although a kid got killed locally, trying to dodge a petrol queue. What are the taxi drivers blockading the road for? To stop tankers?

Harlow is very close to me. Don't be ashamed that you haven't visited it, it's not a very impressive town. I hardly go there unless I am avoiding traffic on the M25.

I imagine that they are trying to make a point by creating traffic jams - not difficult to do during the rush hour in this town.
A pity Harlow is not impressive. The reason for my being there is not very exciting either. I shall resign myself to an extremely tedious couple of days.
Do you like absurd jokes? Alex told me this one..

If your mother is a refrigerator,
And your father is a microwave oven,
How many Pizzas can you fit in a dishwasher?

None, because a dishwasher can't fly.

If you did not find that at all amusing, do not worry - most people don't. If you smiled just a little, try this one..

What is the difference between a duck?

What days will you be here?

One of it's legs is both the same.
That's a favourite of my brother and I when we are drunk.
He is 34.

When is a goat nearly?

I am delighted! You are my superior in the field of absurd jokes.I don't know when a goat is nearly - but I cannot resist guessing and I cannot wait to hear the usual answer
Fried spinach?
The Daily Telegraph?
Afterwards?

I will arrive in Harlow, probably driving, on the evening of Sunday November 12th. My employers have arranged for me to stay at the Harlow Moat House, which though it sounds like a mediaeval manor is probably a glass and brick monstrosity. It is the venue for what has been described as a 'forum'on Monday and Tuesday, probably from nine 'til five. I may also stay over for a training course on Wednesday - if my mental faculties have not been completely numbed by the proceedings of the previous two days. I hate being incarcerated in hotels - unless they have good beer and a swimming pool.

On the subject of the absurd, I remember a role playing group (AD&D)I used to go to in Devizes. The DM was very fond of NPCs, and characters, with pseudo-aztec names. Twentyfourkilowattelectricquetl springs to mind and one can readily imagine others.. Lottabotl, Copaquetl, Rentaruma etc. etc. One remembers the most peculiar things.

When it's all but!!
Ha ha ha.
Deary me.
I haven't stayed in enough hotels to complain about them.
I can't comment on the Moat House as I haven't seen it. What used to be the Moat House in my town is quite pretty, an old building with beams on. (Sorry, architecture is not my strong point.)


They are rather bizarre names.
No idea where our refs get some of their NPC names, TV mostly I think. And the back of their warped minds. I have a character nicknamed "Private Parts." Even I can't remember her real name offhand. She's not even a Private any more, she got promoted. And married.

So now she's Corporal Punishment?
An old building with beams on - could be Tudor, or mock Tudor. I saw an old building with Ivy on the other day, so I told her to get down before she fell. 'Surely I'm safe enough here' she said. I disagreed and asked her to stop calling me Shirley.
Oh dear - I'm drifting into drivel.
I don't stay in hotels very often, but down the years (maybe I should change my H2G2 name to methuselah)I have suffered a fair few. I have never yet come across one that I could bear to stay in continuously for more than eighteen hours - and the only thing that made eighteen hours bearable was the fact that the beginning and end of it was spent sporting with a most adorable girl; and the middle dining and sleeping adjacent.
Are you familiar with Coleridge's Kubla Khan and the 'person from Porlock'? I had a similar (though less sublime) experience last night after several pints and half a bottle of plonk. I thought of some lines for a really good poem, got distracted by reminding Alex that sleep might be a good idea and then found that I had almost completely forgotten my inspired verse. All that I can remember is that it began 'I have a drunken intellect...' Hey ho, I shall just have to keep plugging away at the day job.

I have no idea what Coleridge's Kubla Khan is I'm afraid, so I'm not really sure what you mean, but it's a shame about the forgotten verse. Especially as it has such an interesting first line. I didn't really like poetry, but since being on the net,I see it all over the place. I even wrote one of my own, as a friend persuaded me. We went to a site that had tiles with words on and we had to put them together using 20 tiles or less. We had some fun messing around.

Your drivel is quite entertaining, so keep it up.
Now I really have to go to work, which is lucky, as I was worried that with the petrol shortage I wouldn't be able to work, and I am really skint as I had £200 worth of parts fitted to my PC this week. So I hope there is some work out there for me. Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

I'm glad that you don't mind the drivel and I hope that you found enough work to compensate for your extravagance. I think that the worst of the fuel shortage is over now - just as well as my tank is running a bit low and I'm far too impatient to queue.
My weekend was largely spent at or between various swimming pools. Alex got his national backstroke time - two months after the Nationals. This morning I dragged my reluctant corpse out of bed at 05.50 to take him to training. Early mornings don't seem to bother Alex - it must be the clean and healthy lifestyle.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

Coleridge claimed to have written this amazing poem in an opium dream and that it was never properly completed because he was interrupted by a visit from a tradesman from Porlock. The symbolism is open to many interpretations but the words themselves have an almost hypnotic power. The first four lines have provided titles for at least three books, a song and a film and the rest of the poem has inspired countless other works. Read it all at
http://www.glue.umd.edu/~ugo/other/poetry/Kublakhan.html
I could not, in comparison, help but think uncharitably of the Millenium Dome.

Saturday night wasn't too bad for work. Took a nice bit of money, which was nice. It's virtually all gone now of course, as I had to go shopping today.

I also had a mad moment last night and decided to drag all my books off the shelves as the shelves were leaning sideways rather precariously, and now I can't seee the floor in my living room, or the sofa. And I've lost interest now. I'll get it done in a minute I reckon.
There is more petrol around, but still loads of queues. My car has been ok, but it took me 7 petrol stations to find fuel for the taxi, then the police let me put £15 at an emergency services only place. Whether they were doing it for all taxis or just because I am a woman and it was 4am by then I don't know.

That's ridiculously early to be getting up. I'm glad that J doesn't show signs of being very talented at his swimming. He went up a class at the end of last term, but can't go swimming until October because he had a small operation (or procedure) in August. I hope they don't cancel his place. I should have rang them really.

That poem is a bit spooky actually, but I did enjoy it.

Presumably J is doing grades. Alex didn't start swimming until he was seven and it took him ages to get the hang of things. I think the earlier children learn to swim the better. I learned to swim at 27 (!)and I can still only do a rather pathetic head-up breastroke. I managed a length of front-crawl on holiday this year. Alex says my style isn't too bad but unfortunately I have never got the hang of breathing correctly.
Sorting books is probably one of the most time consuming pastimes known to humankind. You drag them all from the shelves, vowing that you will throw some away. You sort them by Author/subject. You ask yourself as you sort them 'do I really want this?'. With the exception of a few really naff ones, which got back on the shelf out of habit, you decide that you might want to read any of them again and, anyway, your offspring or friends should have the opportunity of reading them.You put most of the books back on the dangerously sagging shelves and find that you now have some that do not fit. You pile them in a corner vowing to buy another bookcase. Repeat about annually ad infinitum.

J is doing something they call a "swim scheme" He got his 10 metre badge last term, over a year after he got his 5 metre badge. He started swimming at 9 months, and is just sort of cruising along. His ADHD doesn't really help either. He is nearly 6 now, and I keep thinking of moving him onto the swimming club, where he would probably get on quicker, but the times are all wrong for us. Maybe next year.
I learnt to swim at 7 and I am appalling at it, even though I also did life saving classes for 2 years at about age 13.
I wasn't really trying to get rid of any books, I was trying to make space for some new ones that I was given and a few I bought at the weekend. I made space by putting a load of videos in a box. The shelves are the first I have ever seen that don't actually sag. They were made for me by a friend and sort of bolted into an alcove in my last flat. They are not made for freestanding, which is why they started leaning, but they are not sagging at all. It's great.

This is entirely the problem - one accumulates books faster than one disposes of them. Amazing, then, that when one goes to look for a particularly beloved volume it has always disappeared. I am still quietly mourning the loss of two fantastic fantasy novels by Seamus Cullen - 'The Sultan's Turret' and 'A Noose of Light'. Ten points if you can tell the origin of those titles!

That'll be no points for me, as I really have no idea.

I once sold virtually all my books as I was umemployed for a year. I still haven't replaced those ones, but have managed to gather together another lot. I keep seeing them in charity shops, and then a friend gave me a load last week.
I haven't read the last lot he gave me yet.