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

Festina lente, nice phrase, wonder what it means?

Must check Awix film review that Elektra recommended

Wonder if I will end up in St Ives with Peanut and co one day.

Michael McClure's poetry. Beat Buddhist. Beautiful, I love it.

Quaker meeting. I would like to go to a Quaker meeting. What is the Quaker philosophy?

I suppose every human being is a bit bonkers really, (speaking purely for myself) , what a strange, glorious yet difficult gift is our humanity.

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A few of the Beat poets turned to Buddhism, most famously Allen Ginsberg.

What is this funny posting?

Well, I have to make lists, because you guys make me think of many things. I shall speak in lists from now on. No! Please don't speak in lists I hear you say. .

I like to think that I don't own the momentary muse and madness of creation, that's how I try to establish balance. Like, I see a leaf, that suddenly turns all leafy on me, like, not a leaf I recognise, and how extraordinary is creation! and then I have to return the vision to its source, just to survive the mystery of leaf.

I need supper.

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You want something to meditate on? Try this one Elektra found:

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/sweeping-look-earth-iss-212656586.html

It's home movies from the ISS, with a good score. I am amazed. What a view.

Wow. (takes another mouthful of veggie chilli). Holysnakes. And I love the music, entitled Premonition. That is just so beautiful, and puts it all in perspective!See those lights! Thanks!

We often go outside and check the ISS as it goes over. You can get the times from their website. I have been dragged out quite a lot in the last few years, standing in the freezing snow and ice watching the big moving star. The spouse is an enthusiast.

Next time I will shout up 'great movies guys!'. I am convinced that they see us, standing on the lawn in our bobble hats. They don't of course. I know this really. This reality upsets me. . When they first landed on the moon, I stood on the lawn in my bobble hat and waved. I was a kid then. Things don't really change. .

Bobble hats are funny, aren't they? I wonder why they have a bobble. Who invented bobble hats, and why....

(eats veg chilli and considers the awesome nature of creation).

PS How's the glass paperweight poem going, mvp? I await. But no pressure, of course. In your own time.

That post of yours was amazing, Willem. I just need to appreciate it right here. Interesting insights into Vincent.

Perhaps sometimes people have to go there .... like a bit too far over ... so they can hopefully return and help out someone else, pull them back by the shirt tails. Do you find that? That you understand others who are on the edge?

We knew this photographer guy, he did amazing work when in a creative fever, but when in the hospital he took no photos. So, as you say, the madness wasn't good for his career, whereas the creative fever was his fuel.

I'm afraid I can't write the glass paperweight poem until I can find a suitable paperweight to describe.

I once stood on a Brighton pavement and wrote a detailed description of a rubbish bin. And then I didn't use it! That's what poetry does to you.

Hah! So you write on location then? I love it. Would that be the actual bin, or the contents as well?

Or something entirely other .... (you never know with these poets ).

Do you keep your bits and pieces of research? If they don't make it into the intended work, do they sometimes turn up unexpectedly in another work?

There's a craft shop near us which sells those beautiful Caithness glass paperweights. I go in there to buy glass marbles (I collect glass marbles) but I always stare into the paperweights on my way.

It's so great buying glass marbles. They are very inexpensive, and you get a few of them in a bag.

I feel like a kid in a sweetshop, with a bag of gobstoppers. Remember gobstoppers?

I was trying to write a poem about a man who climbed into one of those big rubbish bins they have in Brighton. He fell asleep and was killed when the rubbish lorries collected the contents.

My research goes in my notebooks, of which I have many. I've just bought a new one, which has blue and midnight cats on it - witches' cats

I don't think gobstoppers featured in my childhood. I remember jellybabies and liquorice allsorts, mint imperials and chocolate eclairs.

Really?? Ohmigod, that's awful. I've seen those big bins, with the notices on them, warning against climbing in. Hmm.

Ahh notebooks, mmmm, lovely notebooks.

I have this long standing ambition to do a project on the subject of notebooks throughout the ages. The spirit of the notebook itself, described in word, photograph, or set to music in all it's dogeared, doodled, scrawly inspirational glory.



Sherbet fountains! , and lemon sherbet in a bag.

I've got a project book for Dreaming in Stone. The covers are missing, it has pictures stuck in it, bits of paper protruding from between the pages and lots of crossings out. I meant to keep it organised, but failed.

No sherbert fountains though. Just or .

I remember Smarties, sticky round lollipopos, and little biscuits which blobs of icing, which we called Kremlin towers.

catching up with threads and



pocket money choices, rainbow crystals, 7p for quarter of an ounce
sounds dodgey, well, the food colourings were unregulated those days, it was hideous for your teeth and we used to lick them out the bag which made me Mum cringe

That's all so interesting...our candy choices were so tame in comparison to yours.

We sometimes got a candy bar out of a machine, like Hershey's, or a Baby Ruth, or a Zero bar, or a Pay Day...especially if we visited my small-town uncles and greatuncles, who all ran petrol stations. Otherwise, there were lemon drops, and butterscotch, peppermints, and toffees. Oh, and Life Savers.

A lot of our sweets were homemade. Who wouldn't rather have Mom's fudge or divinity candy, or peanut brittle, or a cupcake, than something in a plastic wrapper?

rainbow crystals (what?? I haven't lived, never knew the rainbow crystals ),

Kremlin towers,(I remember something that could answer that description, what a great name, I thought they were sugar candle flames, what were they really called?)

Hersheys and a Zero Bar (well, that is just plain romantic , straight out of a song ,)

my friends you are painting the candydandy sugarworld here in ways that are waking me up like a kid of Christmas morning ....

... and I am rootling in that Christmas stocking for my little net bag of chocolate pennies! I am rich in chocolate pennies and I must eat them all before morning, in case the dog finds them, or in case my brothers steal them. I'm allowed because it's Christmas, provided I don't chuck up,(which I usually do) but I can't eat the golden wrappers (although the dog does). .

There was a fruit sweet, had the fruit painted on the wrapper, beautiful wrappers, raspberry, lemon, strawberry, and the green one ... what was the green one? Lime?

Was there a green one? Help! I am remembering fictional green sweeties!

Anyway, I stuck the wrappers into my scrapbook. .

I don't remember sweets at school, severe rationing I suspect. I think, after the austerity of the wartime years, my parents were happy to offer us sweeties at home, no excess though, except for Xmas and Easter, then it was all out choccy binge. .

Sometimes there were tins with toffees in them, and got to keep the tin afterwards for my pencils.

So I haven't changed much, .

Your Dreaming in Stone project book mvp, makes me drool even more than all this sugarspeek. .

I think I remember sweets with wrappers with pictures of fruit on them, and I suppose the green ones were lime. I don't remember what the Kremlin towers were really called - probably something boring like Mini Iced Fancies.

There weren't any sweets at my school, either - just small bottles of warmish milk which pupils didn't drink.
But it's difficult to remember exactly when all these things appeared - and disappeared. When did Smith's crisps come in packets with a twist of blue paper that contained salt? When did I discover chocolate raisins?

This is off the subject of sweets, but on the subject of 'when?'

When I was a kid, fast food was still way new.

Our church used to have an annual picnic in one of the city parks, with a 'covered dish' serving about 300 people. But one year, the ladies got tired of all that cooking. They wanted to have fun, too. So they made a suggestion:

A local restaurant called 'The Chicken Villa' would make up boxed meals for everyone for $1 each. You could have fried chicken or breaded shrimp, plus mashed potatoes and gravy, cole slaw, and rolls. Yum. We went for it. The box came with napkins, a wet-wipe, and a . I believe they invented that utensil.

It was, of course, an early version of KFC, and the chicken and gravy were much better back then. I can swear to it. I was about 9 or 10. And I can't find the history of this on the web.

Funny, my childhood food memories are less about sweets, and more about meat and vegetables...must be a Southern US thing.

I can still remember the delicious chili they made in my elementary school cafeteria...with homemade melba toast...

My fondest food-related childhood memories are of eating at my grandparents'. At that point only my mom's father and mother were left. Grandma Marie made 'farm food' that was always delicious: lots of meat, lots of vegetables. I was always a vegetable eater, I never hated spinach or stuff like that, there were only two vegetable foods I didn't like, pumpkin and beets. But the main meal was often followed by a great dessert. Also we often had Chinese food, there was a Chinese restaurant not farm from my grandparents' apartment. I always looked forward to the 'bow ties', little crispy sweet cakes. I wonder if that shop is still there.

South African traditional dessert food! 'Koeksisters'. These are 'braided' dough cakes fried and covered with sugar syrup! My mom made wonderful cheesecake, no shop I've ever bought it in comes close to getting it as tasty as she did. She also made something I love 'dadelkoekies' (date cakes). You make them with dates and crunched biscuits and some other stuff, probably a lot of butter and sugar. My mom also often made us fudge. Then there is 'melktert' or milk tart, a kind of pie with a lot of milk in it and scented with cinnamon. Then there is 'kluitjies' (dumplings), which are wads of sweet dough cooked also scented with cinnamon. Then there's 'malvapoeding', a brown kind of bread-like sweet dessert, typically eaten with custard. There are lots more ...

There are some things that always seem better home made. Lemon curd and lemon meringue pie are among these.

If you buy lemon meringue in a shop, sometimes you get a bright yellow sticky stuff, that is very sweet and pretty horrible.
If you make it yourself, you get something that is a more natural colour and not as stiff, but tastes intensely of real lemons.

(I'm beginning to sound like Masterchef, which is always a bad idea. )

No, you're not. That's a good observation.

I could never eat what other people called lemon meringue pie. What my mom made was so delicious and so intense, we could only have 'two cookies' worth' at a time.

You see, she used crumbled vanilla wafers for crust, with whole cookies around the edge. 'Two cookies' worth' meant we didn't go into shock...

lemons I think were quite exotic for us and were only ever seen on the rare occasions that my parents were having 'sophisticated g+t s'
we thought the height of grown upness was having a bowl of Grandma's trifle for tea because it had sherry in it

my Mum's homemade pies and crumbles . Fools were my favourite made with milk and cream from our Jerseys

Ahh you guys are so great.

No wonder we are all so brilliant, speaking purely for ...erm .. you. .Perhaps it is true that twenty five percent of what we eat goes to fuel our brains. .. (someone told me that.)

These descriptions are amazing, and international!! (I was hoping Willem would appear, I was going to ask about South African foods ...)

The salt in the blue twisty paper in the crisp packet! (that you never found till after you had eaten all the crisps. .) Yes! now it's all coming back. I might have to write a flickering piece about buying crisps in half remembered newsagents that smelt of paraffin heaters. The newsagents, not the crisps.

I like to think that at one time twenty five percent of my thought processes were fuelled by my Gran's sherry trifle. . She would use old sponge cake, biccies, jam, custard powder, anything she could find in the cupboard, slosh in the sweet sherry, top if off with whippy creamy stuff, sprinkle with hundreds and thousands, and presto! we were well away.

It was magic eating at my Gran's house. Relaxed.

My mother had to work from dawn till dusk to feed the family, (hungry farmers), and she wasn't naturally domestic, or relaxed in her role. She wasn't keen on food. I felt for her. There were no choices.

I felt guilty about having choice, but it's no wonder that I drifted away from the domestic life, to write peculiar poems to the London drizzle, living on tinned spaghetti (in tomato sauce), roll-up ciggies and raisins.

(Not a recommended diet. Explains quality of literary output..Incredibly pretentious paragraph. I'm allowed one per posting. .)



Hey, amazing international interesting people, thanks for thoughts

talking of crisp packets, does anyone else like opening them by squeezing?