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

Reads all recent postings. You geniuses.

(Vividly remembers the sign saying Cantelupe Rd.)

Irrelevant

(Remembers she was, in fact, born in Bexhill. (wonders what the pattern of the constellations was up to that day. Could it predict she was destined to meet the godfather of Heavy Leslie?).

Relevant

There is definitely some kind of time shift going on. (stares accusingly at empty brandy glass from last night).

Relevant

Oh, have to go eat supper. . Can you wait? Beware, suspense can kill.

Back later.

Waits patiently.

Actually, I have little to say, because you people hold the light. You people understand the Pennsylvania sea coast. You do?? .

Plus you people know about floating churches and quite a lot of other things.

If you think about it, though, the birth of a person happens at a particular moment in time.

So it is with the birth of Heavy Leslie! It was destiny. Had to be on that particular evening. I don't who said it did, but it did.

So the Sabs, the guy from Delaware, the dentist, all had to surrender their daily routines, their stripy dressing gowns and fluffy slippers, their scrambled egg on sourdough breakfast in their hometown, so they could find Mr D, and make it could happen.

How, or why they got involved, well I have no idea, but you people know all.

Of course, I'm not sure if the guy from Delaware is happy about destiny.

He's jetlagged, grumpy, and isn't too keen on Bexhill, even though he could hire a bike in the morning and be very happy and healthy. He certainly has no time for dentists named Dr Ian Pullem. . It makes his tooth ache more.

And ...

wait! ... back in a min

Sadly I'm just sitting here designing album covers...geography was never a strong point!

And I think its to do with diagrams.

FWR drew cosmic diagrams on the walls of the pavilion.

A street map of Bexhill is a diagram. Actually its a map. OK, well perhaps its to do with maps, diagrams, patterns, and constellations.


The Pennsylvania sea coast can be understood through a diagram, it is a cosmic pattern. It is??

And these people are all finding their way through a cosmic diagram, with a centre made from pure energy. Like a mandala.

Unless they're not. Not sure really, I'm making this up. No, surely not.

The guy from Delaware wants to break out of the diagram. He wants to go home to his studio in the garden, to live peacefully and make wooden carvings of owls and eagles.

The diagram constricts him, but he needs this job, so he has to stick with it.

I like the guy from Delaware. I'd marry him if I wasn't old enough to be his granny. (irrelevant).

Typo. And make it could happen?? ? I typed that, but the could has other places to go.

We might could do that, as Jimmy Carter once said while he was president. Correctly. Indeed, we might could, and he probably should have, and we may can do that yet.

I ended up having to explain that to the English Department.

Okay, you horrible people, here it is:

http://youtu.be/xuSyJTZBMmM

More later, now that I seem to have figured out how to load these things.

Okay, it's not Ozzy Osbourne, but here is what I called 'A Whiter Shade of Pale Nigel':

http://youtu.be/iqyZILPn84E

Hail to thee oh Dark Lord of Heavy Leslie!

The man from Delaware sat in the cafe (which was listed as the 7th best cafe to have lunch in in Bexhill) and cursed again as the hot tea irritated his already rather irritable teeth.

He stared out at the still falling rain battering Terminus Road. His hands, however, never even glanced at the downpour, they were far too busy doodling what appeared to be a rather complicated map, his left hand traced outlines of coastlines and rivers in a deep Tesco back to school blue, whilst the right neatly added what appeared to be roadways or railway tracks in a rather leaky Tesco basics red felt tip.

He hummed along with A Whiter Shade of Pale Nigel, the old hit coming from the cafe's older radio. Outside the rain beat time on the rented bicycle's seat......

Love the Whiter Shade of Pale Nigel and Molly Does Bach, hail to thee, ye person who knows how to put things on YouTube!

(bows to the master, and offers donuts ) and an imaginary bottle of cherry brandy from 1967.)



Actually, when we were clearing my late Dad's house, we found a bottle of cherry brandy from about 1920, or that's how it tasted. . It must have been opened, the cork wasn't entirely airtight it seems.

I spluttered a few times, and saw the edge of known reason.

I love this writing, FWR.

I can see this scene, this picture!!

Your writing style is so evocative.

I love the description of the diagram, the felt tips from Tesco.



Interestingly, or not, it was at school in Bexhill that I first heard A Whiter Shade of Pale. A rare treat to be allowed into the TV room, sitting up straight on austere wooden chairs, to watch Top of the Pops. 1967? methinks.

Only 12 yrs old, but those lyrics affected me forever.

I was sure my spirograph patterns, or my handrawn crayon scribbles, could take me home, to the place that those lyrics came from.

Of course, had I heard A Whiter Shade of Pale Nigel at this time, my journey home might have been less stressful. I would have understood all.

You know what ...(profound thought alert) .. will change postings..

The Profound Thought

You can blush shyly.

Its an amazing thing to be able to share the fragments of my swirling mind with you geniuses, writers, poets, philosphers, musicians, painters, and many other things.

I exist in a world of fragments. They are my companions, my cornflakes, my half remembered home.

However, you folks can travel far and wide, mix the shining jewels from your minds with my scruffy fragments and turn it all into stories and symphonies and paintings and photographs and Guide Entries and silver dragonflies, and offer them to the world.

Silver dragonflies? I don't know where they flew in from. .

I know I can do this a bit, also, but I love it when you do it, mostly and mainly, because its like having new and original pictures beamed back from a half remembered home.

Sort of thing. A bit.

End of Profound Thought.

Paying the Organist.

There was a major legal battle between Matthew Fisher of Procol Harum, who wrote the iconic Hammond organ intro and some of the melody? for Whiter Shade Of Pale -

(as featured on the Top Of The Pops video, hunched over the Hammond organ, wearing a black hood)

- and Gary Brooker who sung it, and owned the copyright.

Did Gary Brooker write the lyrics?

Anyway, I think Matthew Fisher eventually won the rights to his share of the copyright.

So, ye Leslie organists in black hoods, or not, make sure the man from Delaware, or someone else entirely, pays you. .

Personally, I think you two are onto something....Bexhill is beginning to take on the dimensions of an alternate reality within the multiverse... Rather like 'The Man in the High Castle', in fact. Only with weird musical variations rather than Nazis...

I'm a real duffer at this video business. The only thing I could figure to do was add enough slides so the 'movie' finished the tune I loaded, so it was an exercise in slapping random cartoons into the video parser until it played the song, seven seconds at a time...this is definitely *not* how Stanley Kubrick got started. But it was pleasantly surreal...

Stanley Kubrick might have started in a similar way, it all has to start somewhere. .

Interesting thought. How did film makers start out.

I think its great that you figured it out. Sounds very technical! A video parser? Seven seconds at a time? I'm impressed.

I wouldn't know where to begin, loading things into YouTube. Then once they were in, I'd go all shy anyway, and start searching for tiny escape hatches in the back of my laptop, to release the bats.

Bats? What bats?

It was just the word hatches.

The roof of the apartment house that we lived in before needed repairs, and the roof guys found a dead bat under the rafters.

Any evidence of bats, and all work on a property has to cease, till the Bat Conservation people are called. Tis the law. If they reckon the bats are still around, or even interested in being around, you have to put bat hatches in the roof, so they can come and go.



Ah yes!That would be so good to be able to write a alternate reality within the multiverse story! A what? What's a multiverse?

You guys would be so amazing at writing a story like that, you already are.

I'll just hang around, talking about bats.

Did I ever show you the bat we found sleeping at the bottom of our staircase one morning? It ended up in a Guide Entry called 'How to Evict a Sleeping Bat: A87891178

I think s are cute. My bro-in-law doesn't. He prefers to sicc the cats on them. I disapprove.

I wanted to post the video on my blog instead of Youtube, but I haven't figured out how to satisfy their format needs yet. I'm hopeless. SashaQ is much better. Check out Sasha's latest video on our august site: A87875987

And...with Sasha's help (and Guide Editors' permission), here's 'A Whiter Shade of Pale Nigel' on our own website:

http://h2g2.com/entry/A87898126

Warning: it only works in Pliny.

We're working on reviving the AV project - someday, there may be video Post quizzes.