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

My typos are so funny. I'm still not wearing my glasses. .A couple of postings back, I wrote I'm not an expect, instead of an expert. I'm neither an expect nor an expert. I am someone who enjoys jacket potatoes.

What about your writing, then sprout? You often turn out a marvellous poem, from your travels. Do you write every day? Do you keep a notebook?

(I'm interviewing you now, like I interviewed mvp on the other thread) .

I love writing, and I suppose I write not every day, but prob every other day. Always have a notebook with me, yes. I was complaining in MVP's journal that the novel writing eats into my poetry writing, but to be honest sometimes daft computer games eat into both!

And sometimes the cellar needs renovating, like now - not sure what kind of poems I would write in the cellar Gollum riddles maybe...

sprout

hah! riddles and poems from the dark cellar eh? no computer games allowed in the cellar, I have spoken, , so you can write in there, with the wine racks and a spluttering candle for company. .

Renovation sounds interesting. Does this suggest an old property? Are you converting the cellar into a living space?

There was evidence of some kind of blocked-in cellar in the old house that my parents lived in, although some say it might have been to do with the Sussex smuggling tunnels. Quite spooky. I'm a bit scared of smuggling tunnels, could be because I'm a nervy lady, I wouldn't know how to greet an old Sussex smuggler, even in ghost form .

PS Must find out what the Cathar Trail is, I heard people speak about it. What's the Cathar Trail?



Well, still 'ere then. . Hullo world. . The only advantage about the end of the world is that we wouldn't have had to watch Slade night tonight on BBC 4 (UK). haha. How could I say that? I love Slade, and the sneezing wheezing spouse has no choice. .

And Solstice Greetings to all those who are doing more meaningful celebrations than Slade night on the BBC. .

I didn't know the Cathars had a trail.

Here's what I know about Cathars, CC:

They were a group of Christians in medieval France. They were exactly the kind of people you would have liked - they were, er, alternative. They practised birth control. They loved each other rather freely, that sort of thing. Nice people.

Not altogether surprisingly, the Church declared a crusade against them, called the Albigensian Crusade. They died in large numbers, and the Church stole all their property.

So far, so awful.

Now, in the 1970s, I think it was, a psychiatrist in the US - of the Jungian variety, naturally - started regressing his patients hypnotically. One of them turned out to be a Cathar.

Now, even though he didn't tell any of his other patients this, of course, a lot of them turned out to be Cathars, as well.

There seems to have been a mass reunion of reincarnated Cathars somewhere in the Southwest that decade.

One suspects that it has something to do with that desert climate...

They sound

Hiccup has finished her Solstice feast, her request was mashed swede and potato with gravey and poppadoms

she dollops (in mouthful portions) her swede and potato mash suitably smothered in gravy on her poppodom and eats it like that

Really? How extraordinary. That is amazing! Thankyou friend! I'm really into the Cathars now. Sounds like everyone I know. . I think everyone I know might be a reincarnated Cathar. Suddenly my life makes sense. Thankyou for this information. I might have to become lizard (again) , and somehow scuttle in my daydreams to the deserts of the SouthWest, to immerse myself in the energy of this situation.

No but really, this is so interesting.

mmmm Happy Solstice Peanut and Hiccup! and now I'm hungry.

A hungry lizard, on the Cathar Trail.

Try reading (and illustrating) a Cathar text:

http://gnosis.org/library/Interrogatio_Johannis.html

'Now Satan, filled with evil plots...'

Hiccup has a really healthy diet, eh? Greetings to her!

Happy Solstice to all the daydreamers

On one hand it was a very wrong Solstice this morning,

I was very and it was lovely morning all to the good

the teenagers were up surprisingly early after last night partying and went out to McDonalds for breakfast at 6.45am

still healthy exercise it is a fair old walk there and back

I said i would die in shame if the world ended and my offspring was in McDonalds on a Solstice morning

I did extra mantras with my meditations...

what?? McDonald's?? I love it. Extra mantras indeed. Do McDonald's do a veggie burger? I think I need to experience a McDonalds, it will be good education for my soul.

Holyroses, check these Cathar texts, now here's a Solstice meditation, in fact I think I'll be in these all Christmas. See what you started now, sprout! This is very intense.

they don't veggie burgers but apparently they do the best hash browns in teh whole wide world,

if i am bbq Hiccup isn't so fussed if I were to cook bacon and veggie sausages on the same grill,although I would do them seperate,by the same token if someone else eats the bacon out of McDonalds bap she'll stuff her hash browns in...

An american historian did a fantastic book about the Cathars - I think he reconstructed a lot of what they believed in from Inquisition records or something like that (Nobody expects the French Inquisition! Except the Cathars, probably...)

They left some super castles, trying to escape from the killjoys - and that it is mainly what you can see on the trail.Along with the wine and cheese and wildlife and gorgeous gorges and what have you of course.

It's a part of France that has also been a bit stubborn on the alternative religions - east of there is the Cevennes, where they all turned Protestant, and wouldn't convert back. They put the blokes in the galleys, and the women were locked up in a tower until they said "I recant" - some of them stayed there 50 years...

Talking of being locked up in a dark place - back to the cellar

sprout

Having had a quick read about the Cathars, I found that one Simon de Montfort led the crusade against them. I always thought Simon de Montfort was involved in the battle of Lewes, in Sussex.

Was it possible, even then, to cause trouble in both England and France?

oh aye it was mvp and beyond

I have run into a little stumbling block with Cathars as ,in that I think it okay to have sex with the intention or possible outcome of rumpy pumpy of babies if you choose and under such circumstances this should be only a time for celebration and joy

also a little confused, was it okay with the whole baby making so long as you hadn't taken the sacrement



I applaud the rest of their takes from what I am reading

Morning historians! I sense some historical novels coming on, realisitic yet ritualistic, gritty yet witty.

Sprout might be writing one at this moment, I banned him from computer games, he's in his dark cellar with nothing but a candle and a quill pen , how bossy am I?

Last time I saw Dmitri he was celebrating the Mayan new year, and some other things of wonder. .

Interesting Peanut, what?? ohmigod, think I'm a bit off the Cathars. The trails would be interesting, though, the castles.

The dark star of history.

Simon de Montfort, I know that name, the Battle of Lewes? I feel the ghosts of Sussex history. Those smugglers are trying to communicate with me, offering me authentic French vintage brandy, for the price of my life. I'll take the brandy, make my excuses and hop hop away.

It's raining a lot in Devon right now. We have no trains, most of the roads have turned to rivers, and the rivers are bursting their banks. Our house is on a hill, so we have no fear of flooding, but I feel so sorry for folks to have to evacuate their houses yet again.

(takes to bed with authentic French vintage brandy)

So sprout is writing in his basement, Peanut is following the Cathars, Dmitri is celebrating Mayan New Year, and cc is in bed with French brandy.

And me? I'm just cooking. And trying to get my French chef to offer his English kitchen assistant a glass of Armagnac. (It has to be Armagnac because the Armagnac region is not far south of Lot-et-Garonne.)

Neither is the Cathar country. The local people spoke Occitan until recently and I believe that the South West of France was a stronghold of resistance to the Nazis. Are all these things related - evidence of a certain rugged independence of spirit?

I'll go away and think about the dark of history, the interconnectedness of human experience...

and how to get Christmas dinner cooked without getting into too much of a mess!

Bon chance, there! Sounds wonderful.

heheh, of course mvp is never just cooking, she's writing this novel, set in France ... she's the writer who cooks the Christmas dinner whilst cooking up another twist to the plot ...

et bon appetite!