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

Morning Cass



I had quite a socialable jaunt round town yesterday enjoying the culture of casual conversation

Sounds like there will be a house full for the party, I hope you all enjoy your time together and

Pitch black skies, what a treat. When I was looking around for campsites I noticed that 'dark skies' has become a selling point

Did you manage to get out yesterday, it heaved down here but not first thing as they predicted



Peanut

Morning Peanut

Yes.. It is nice to get out and just enjoy what I regard as English civility, everyone meeting as "Freeborn Englishmen" (and women)on terms of equality in a "no man's land" in which we are all equal ciitizens.

I thought of you when I saw the reports from Clovelli.. Did we not discuss Watchet some time ago? And I recall a later trip which took in Lynmouth after the Lynmouth disaster, that you may have heard about.

As for here. I did manage to get out yesterday and today. Thursday of our weekly shopping day, and by the time we got back from that the rain was starting. So I have to make the most of today to get to the allotment etc and to give the car and good clean inside and out ( good for Mrs. Cass's morale.)

Good news this week was that Facebook has put me in touch with perhaps my best friend from my uni course. We had lost touch somehow over 40 years ago..

Have a nice day

Cass

Hi Cass


Great news about finding your friend. What is like catching up, does 40 years on still feel familar?

I'm not on facebook, or any other site for socialising really, I think the only time I would contemplate joining would be under revolutionary circumstances, and in this country that's unlikely

Not that I mind anyone else enjoying FB, just not my thing

I am fortunate where I live as we are fairly well protected, the surrounding countryside obviously floods and the river also has good defenses

I think when I looked up our flood risk it was something like 1 in 100 year event but it seems to me that we are getting a fair few of those types of events. We have a flood plan, and a fire plan but that is just us,hope we never have to use either but no harm in being prepared

Lovely sunny day here



Peanut

Morning Peanut

Well I have to say that there has not been much "catching up" so far. After an initial Facebook fumbling we got on to email terms and she wrote that she had lots to ask me, but had a very demanding garden.. To be fair she also has three grandchildren plus husband of nearly 46 years standing. Having not heard from her since that first lot of exchanges I wrote her an absence warning yesterday, just in case she emails the next 3 weeks while we are away.

I am currently in the process of cleaning the car.. One of Mrs Cass more recent phobes. Male logic argues that when you are going to be loading a car up with all kinds of things, and living in it for 12 hours or so, it needs cleaning afterwards not before- especially as I will be driving about 600km with the responsibility for our lives in my hands. But there we go. Funny thing is as a girl she was very resistant to all this house-proud cleaning stuff. But I suppose it felt like her Mother's house, not hers. One of the reasons we bought a house was the fact that she still did not like living under her mother's regim!

Good news about you and floods. Actually for our musical entertainments for my in-laws 90th birthday party I had thought of performing Peggy Lee "The Folks Who Live on The Hill"- for that seems to apply to so many of the homes in our family, including the one that our daughter is in the process of buying. When she thought that she had lost it, I had to shelve that idea, but it seems to be 'back on' now. But actually with both our children billed to perform, I suspect that I will just let the grandchildren hold the floor.

As for Facebook, I am still making up my mind. I have enjoyed just browsing the sites of old pupils,and their network of friends just to see how things have developed.. But I am not sure that it is a site for any kind of meaningful exchange.. I have probably written too much all over a group site for one of the school's where I taught. Same problem as on h2g2. Most people just want a bit of quick fun and amusement. But I have never had much of a taste for small-talk.

Better get back to the car.

Regards

Cass

Hi Cass

you still here?

Peanut

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Hi Thomas

Peanut here, the other person in this thread *waves*

Cass is in France for three weeks and I don't think he comes online while he is there at all and definately doesn't come here till he gets back.

Just so you know that over this time a lack of response isn't a lack of a response to you

Best wishes

Peanut

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Hi Thomas,

I have been around for a few years, 11 altogether. I have though spent long bouts lurking, followed by long bouts of posting...

This time I jumped back in when the Beeb said that they were pulling out and I am still posting

You will seeing your own post, it is a quirk (bug) in Pliny, the 'skin' in which you will posting in. You can change these by going to your preferences to older skins which have different quirks but all this is being worked on.

If you are planning on spending a little time here you can try them out and see which you prefer

Are you having a look around or did you come here as you had found Cass? Or a bit of both



Peanut

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Hi Thomas



or if you prefer

I agree with you about the money, I don't think that is what motivates Cass.

I am not familar with the BBC boards, I am taking it the history one got shut down

Anyway, I hope you have another look round while you are here. Do you like writing?

Peanut

Hello Peanut and Hello Thomas B

Good to read from you both.. Even in my (in seems) now usual state of tiredness after the days driving back from Burgundy-- and going through my back-log correspondence of various kinds.

Peanut I hope that things have gone well with you and Hiccup etc over the last few weeks.. My regular annual remark at this time of year in teaching was that it can be a "rape season" as women fail to make allowance for the earlier onset of dark and the deserted streets. But perhaps you do not have deserted streets- as we do in Bligny. It is just so quiet there!

As for correspondence Thomas- Nothing new! Even though I have written a couple of new books since we last exchanged. I arrive back to find two replies from publishers for what was my latest thing "Economics as if People Really Mattered: A Tale of Cities" informing me (once again) that they only listen to submissions by literary agents. But in the meanwhile while away for three weeks I have written what might be a part two based on a book by the greatest French Historian of the sixties-to eighties Fernand Braudel entitled (I translate) "The Identity of France".

Actually I come back to an old idea that perhaps my whole approach might be more acceptable to French tastes than any "Anglo-Saxon one", especially as I have been able to spend much of the work defending France and the French people. Braudel was born in Lorraine in 1902, and was a prisoner of war in Germany from 1940 to 1945: and much of his work is really trying to explain what was wrong with France compared with England- thinking very much in terms of the French structure and organisation.

I had better close for now.. It has been a long day.

Cass

Hello Cass

Good to see you back and looking forward to hearing your news

We are going through some tough times but I try to make h2g2 a break away from that

We did though have a lovely holiday in Cornwall, in a caravan, bit of luxury this time of year is a nice thing, actually a cheap holiday away but the specs were good. Sea view, CH, power shower that would knock your socks off if you were wearing any and we got a dongal which meant that we had wifi and we enjoyed jigsawing which we haven't done for ages.

We saw also a cracking moon rise that is still making me smile and feel when I think of it. And a massive flock of starlings flew out of the sand dunes from nowhere and looked like they we going to hit the window but they didn't, but it was a massive whoosh and make us say an oath in surprise which is still making me



Peanut

Hi There Peanut,

Sorry to read about rough passages/tough times-- but glad that you had a good break and have got some momentum hanging over from it..

As you could no doubt tell, I was feeling a bit daunted yesterday after the dislocation back from Burgundy to Croydon- and to come up against the same brick wall.. But it was good to find Thomas B again. He finally lost patience with me.. Not surprising perhaps because so many people do. Item your first "Hi Cass" whinge.. And Thomas seems to have been teaching himself English via his exchanges on the internet, so I have always been very grateful for the fact that he has probably read more of my output than anyone else on Earth, so he is more entitled to 'pass judgement', find fault and disagree than anyone.

But this morning was quite funny.. I awoke with the gentle rumblings of London waking up, which was a bit of a change from the deathly silence of Burgundy. Gradually I warmed to the energy once again, and almost got up to have my morning walk. But we had gone to bed too late for that to be sensible and Mrs Cass got up anyway. One of the things that struck me on the road yesyerday(as an historian) is that in less than two years I will be Seventy, which really does seem old and perhaps too old to really START doing anything. I am not sure that these walks better not start being actual jogs! I do not fancy being decrepit in my Seventies! But actually during the day I have looked around "my world" and seen "work in progress" all around. Perhaps I have been trying to keep too many "balls in the air". But I suspect too many is better than too few. If you want anything done ask a busy person.

Cheers for now

Cass

Thomas B

Re what you said about the History Forum "which seem to have no posts from you since February 2012"- that really was quite funny. I have never posted on that Forum. But someone decided that I was worth impersonating.. Being someone who could have an imposter was quite an interesting experience.. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. But what about impersonating?

Are there any of the "old crowd" still going strong?

Sweet Sister Temperance can not live too far away from Peanut.. Land of Tarka the Otter.

Cass

Hey Cass

There have been some beautiful mornings and I have thought that you would enjoy them for your walk and talks

Not sure about the jogging though although you might want to pick up the pace to be keeping warm. No reason why you can't take up jogging of course. It seems to me you are fit and active and like the social aspects of your walks and the time to take it all in

Peanut

Morning Peanut

Have you got a good Autumn down there?.. I heard a bit on R4 when in France to the effect that some places have had a spectacular one this year.. I was greatly cheered yesterday morning by the blaze of colour in our back garden and, in spite of the rain, I almost went out for my walk this morning. Then I realised the complication that we give my key to the neighbour when we go away, and I might find myself locked out on my return.. But now that the house has got warmed up again I am perhaps feeling Autumnal- that last blaze, the harvest of all the year, when the trees-retired from their enthralment to the sun and chlorophil can finally reveal their true colours as the green drains away.

Have a good day.

Cass

PS. I think that you are right about jogging.. My morning walks are perfect for that time of day.. But I have often wondered about getting back to regular swimming as OAPs get free entry.. Unfortunately Mrs Cass hates chloroform, though our daughter tells us that modern pools no longer resort to 'over-kill' in the use of chemicals. Perhaps the filtration systems are better and more regular. Some things do improve over time.

Hi Peanut

Just thought of this one:

What is better than chocolate?



Chocoearly.

Cass

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Good Morning Thomas

As I wrote before it is good to hear from you.and it was kind of you to think of internet publishing.. I think we had discussed this before- but things have moved on a great deal it seems with digital publishing, and things like Kindle which apparently can just download a whole library that people can carry around with them.. But I have hardly been encouraged in terms of readership by the result of my efforts on the internet since I invented Casseroleon..But then I can see that part of my obsession with History from the age of ten was an awareness of not really fitting in with the world, and not wishing to fit in with it the way that it was. Of course music is one of the most successful ways, as Yehudi Menuhin put it, of managing to live in a real and living Utopia, and I suppose that I was born to make music.. It was just that the times I was living in seemed so much shaped by a tragic and dangerous history that I felt impelled to head towards the centre from which so much evil eminated.

My collective title for the second part of my work, the first having tackled the question of 'Just how is it possible to live in this world?', and the second 'How is it possible to live together in this world?' was "Of Georges and Dragons". But these are not just intellectual journeys. They are life journeys, the second one being very closely linked with my marrying "the old enemy", or perhaps more accurately 'wedding' since I am not sure after all these years whether we will ever be able to marry together, since I think that- in our English and French ways, we were too much the same in our childhood realities. Her "Utopia" was ballet.

But I keep hoping that the work of making sense of it all will sometime be completed, and I hope that it is in the things I have written this year. Then I will be able to focus more on my music, which was my interface with the world from an early age.. On the road on thursday responding to something on the Radio my wife asked me if I was bullied at school, which led to various reminiscences about being something of a 'weirdo'. Quite early on in life kids in the neighbourhood, seeing me out on my bicycle would ask me to stop and sing them a song, so to some extent I got that special kind of protection that comes from being a bard or troubador.. Music continues to be a daily source of solace and strength, and the Internet is an even better place for releasing songs than books. I have always thought that eventually my songs would have to introduce me to a potential readership.

Regards

Cass