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

Provided they turn out ok. Then it's a buzz looking back.

I don't come across risks to take much. As it happens though, just last Thusday I was thinking that we'd taken our trustees (work ones) to the edge that day to take a quick look into the potential abyss they will soon need to take a leap of faith over.

Same leap the trustees took opening the original hospice without knowing where the funds would come from.

Well in paid employment in RL you're not supposed to take risks, are you?
Time was, I used to think working in R+D made me a risk-taker. Well, duh. Now I realise it just makes me an embarassingly frequent up-a-wrong-tree barker.
Outside work is something else. So that's why bank clerks do bungee jumps.

In R + D, you risk credibility. And taking whole departments down with you. I think that's what b-in-law fears.

Professionally, no not supposed to take risks. Not at all. But with the nature of our income streams? Budget deficit forecast: recommendation - hope. It's not covered in the training.

Bungee jumping has absolutely zero attraction. I don't get it at all, bouncing around on a length of elastic.

http://newkelham.blogspot.com/

Second topic here, you'll see the Engine's back together. Still not clear when it'll run in public though. They're taking the opportunity to fix a few long-standing faults.

You wouldn't recognise the surrounding area now. Completely redeveloped (in progress, as you'll remember, even before it got a bit wet).

Talking of development, Trump's persuasion wasn't really a surprise, was it?

I must have done. Felt sick when I saw that article. Stupid, huh? Thinking the right thing might happen after all. That protection might actually mean something. That maybe Scotland might get this right. It is Scotland - this isn't local any more.

There is only one way, as I used to know, and that's the RSPB's approach of possessing the Deeds. They're the only conservation body I give material financial support to.

At least the SNR own Forvie now. They only leased it till recently. But there's no buffer zone. The estuary, and the sands are so vulnerable. Enough.




I'm glad about Kelham. I've checked the museum website for news and never found any. Didn't think of googling blogspots.

Redeveloped into?




Did you see, at the P & S, what I wanted to do with A20724491?

PS was talking, over the weekend, to one of the three electrical engineers who got Sheffield back online during the flood. Said he noticed a ladder left leaning against one of the buildings where they were. Eventually asked about it - it was their 'escape' plan should that dam burst. They were in its path.

I heard you say Enough, so we'll leave that one there.

Redeveloped into all sorts. You'll remember it was all a warren of run-down and derelict riverside factories? Now there are flats and new offices, a pleasant Donside walk and a new inner ring road sweeping by. There are still the working factories in amongst it too. It's a lot better. The Upper Don Valley changed in appearance in every decade from about 1800 to 1950, then it stalled and fell apart. I'm glad it's changing again.

Yes, I saw your ideas for the Somalia piece. I know you'll be careful. Fractured writing can lose it's power when it's mended.

Which reminds me of something I rediscovered in a loft-sort a few days ago. An old calendar, annotated by a seven-year old Scrof, then coming to terms with the last illness and death of her brother. On the day after he died, she just wrote "I hoped". Last time I read that I was numb, and just assumed she'd stopped because she was too choked to continue. Now I wonder if she wrote all she intended to write.

At the weekend she'll be back from Uni and up for Christmas, a bright young woman who thankfully came through it all.

Hmmm. Not sure where that came from. Delete? No, not when it's Waz.

Thinking about it, I guess there is a connection in all of these snippets. Things recover, my friend. Even from golf.

I could understand it being all intended.

There are connections, and things much, much more important than golf courses. And even than sand dunes. I do love that place though. Thanks Pin.


The Somali piece - I'll bear that in mind. I know it might not work even trying to change as little as possible. The last sentence, and the triangular discipline bit are particularly difficult to get the meaning of. If you've any ideas?

The last sentence I think I understand. The narrator is interpreting the Somali refugee's plight through his own experience of the Liberian famine (2004 presumably).

Triangular discipline I don't follow. It has a lilt though. There are quaint phrase throughout (salaries from God, bright like the Moor, royal questions) that I wouldn't want to lose. The piece is strengthened by its strangeness. There are unfamiliar cultures and sentiments mixed up with the stark lot of the victim.

Would you mind giving an opinion on the edited version, or would you rather see if it comes up for QA?

You mean A20683316?

That's it - how'd you find that? It was nicely buried.

Is it finished? Do you want me to comment now?

(Easy to find. If you put 'refugee somalia' into the world's worst search engine, the second ref has the giveaway title of WIP)

Never thought of the search engine.

Nothing I can edit's ever finished in less than months but comment now, yes please.

Triangular discipline - I think discipline = correction, and it's describing people zigzagging around the woman and back onto their original paths.

'stepped around' doesn't suggest the return to original paths, but I can think of no short unintrusive way to get the image over. Zigzag doesn't have the right sound.

Salaries of God - I reckon the connection is to wages of sin and the reference is interesting because we don't talk of the wages of good. Can't decide if it justifies changing.

The last sentence - the original's distractingly difficult. I think this version's in keeping with the entry but is more change than I'd like.


Change or not to change - it's interesting. I like the unusual phrases, they're thought provoking because they're unusual - but given the choice, and going by Kumudkumari, I suspect the authors would choose more readily understood, less interesting wording.

Sorry, I should have replied sooner. I was looking for a diplomatic way of saying something. Not my style really, so here goes.

It's a little more comprehensible now, but it's neither one thing nor the other in this form. You've altered it, and that's a big minus in my opinion. You've only gone a short way in interpreting it, which is a small plus.

Still adds up to negative, then.

I asked if you'd finished, because I hoped you hadn't. It reads as if you first resolved to sort it, then confronted the difficulty, and then copped out after a bit of tinkering (with both the writing and your conscience).

I would say either leave it as it was or do a more purposeful job on interpretation. It might be easier to do the latter by annotation rather than rewriting.

Well, you did ask

Diplomatic phocoids

I'm letting it go cold. I got to what I thought was comprehensible enough for a reader not to be thrown. But changed more than I wanted to in doing so.

You can't interpret without altering, right? How would annotation work.

PS Gethin to win!

Annotation: you could use footnotes, or write an interpretation in essay style ("in the first paragraph, the narrator seems to be referring to...suggesting that..."). Or any level in between.

With the original alongside, you might as well go the whole hog on clarifying the meaning.

Sorry. I didn't mean to diss. You did ask.

I didn't take it as dissing.

With the original alongside - exactly. You've given food for thought. A complete rewrite is a bit cheeky and a full essay feels a bit heavy but I'll have a try at both and see what they feel like.