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

aww thanks. *takes and places it in an empty vase*

it went so well last night! my mum saw the program just before the lights went out and at the end she called me a 'little toad' for not telling her. she looked so happy and i was on such a high i was almost flying!
nowhere near Cambridge as to my knowledge of geography which, despite studying it for umpteen years, is rather dismal, although if you want to know about anti-natal schemes in China then i'm your man! i'm in Taunton which is in Somerset. don't think it's very near to Cambridge and i don't think anyone can get in to see the last 2 nights now because they've been fully booked since last week.
i think they're going to video-tape it though because my mum wants me to get a copy for my dad to see because he couldn't come out and watch.
maybe when we're studying at Cambridge together i'll let you see it.
have fun at Cambridge! don't worry, heels are overrated anyway. they were invented by height conscious women with issues. you'll be fine, and don't worry about the plane flight, i fly around 4 times a term and despite using one of the most unreliable airlines there is (it seems that way sometimes) there's never been a problem. just don't watch LOST before you leave.

Aw, that's fantastic! Sounds excellent! Well done!
I'm not exactly sure where Somerset is, although I'm not an expert on China's anti-natal schemes either. I'll just stick to Tolkien's mythology.
I've just developed some kind of an infection in a cut on my foot, which means the boots are absolutely agonising. If it's still this bad at the weekend, I'm wearing trainers and I don't care if they throw me out.
The plane should be fine, I'm bringing my new Pratchett book with me (Guards! Guards!) so that should distract me nicely. We had to sign a letter saying we wouldn't go on the London Underground unsupervised though. (Like if there's a teacher with us we'll be so much safer from terrorists.) I don't watch Lost... I didn't start at the beginning and now it just confuses me, so maybe I'll get the DVDs sometime.
Anyway I won't be on again till next Tuesday. Have a great time and enjoy the rest of your musical! Here, have another .
Bye!

people here get lost via the internet from america. i watched the first one on tv and the last one i saw was season 2 episode 4. it's good but rather annoying because if you miss an episode the others are so confusing!
sorry to hear about your foot. hope it gets better. if not then wear black trainers rather that white ones. or sandals and a bandage. and crutches, purely for the sympathetic effect.
not sure if i've read Guards! Guards! is that the first city watch book when a guy called carrot comes down from the mountains to be in the watch? i've read that one but it might have been called Men At Arms.
i don't like the london underground. the air is really skanky and horrible, especially when the train comes out of the tunnel and pushes all the nasty air in front of it.
last night was the best show we've done yet! no one got injured seriously in the fight scene and everyone had their props and stuff. the mayor was watching too! (i say watching, he's blind and has a guide dog which we were warned about beforehand)
and at the end i was in the changing room and someone came in and said there was a surprised for me so i went out into the main theatre and someone said the mayor wanted to speak to me. i was like are you shtting me? but they were joking, it wasn't the mayor it was my dad. he's flown over to see me because my mum saw it yesterday, and because i didn't tell her my part had changed she didn't tell me that he was coming to watch. i suppose that's them getting their own back!
hope your trip goes well/went well depending on when you read this.(tenses are so confusing )

Wow. I'm back! Life is normal once more.
Glad the show went well! Sounds fantastic.
My foot is feeling a lot better thanks, but I had to walk all the way to St John's for Evensong wearing the boots, and it was cobbles the whole way so I nearly broke my neck. And then the river was frozen over the next morning so I tried walking on it only the ice was thin so my foot went right through into water about minus ten degrees.
But apart from that it was great!
The students are absolutely mad. One night we bought ice cream and we couldn't eat it all so we handed it out our bedroom window to anyone walking past. And they all took it. These are the most intelligent people in the country, and they'll take food from random strangers.
Then the next morning, the guys on the trip thought it would be hilarious to wake us up early and pretend the taxi was there, so we were all panicking and trying to get packed in thirty seconds and then we ran outside and they were standing there killing themselves laughing.
It was so much fun though! And now I'm back home and I'm meant to be doing a history exam practice that I had to skip today because I was off... I wish I was a student...
Cambridge rocks!
(By the way, we tried to find the place where the Pythons used to perform but they knocked it down )

normal? what's that?

"And then the river was frozen over the next morning so I tried walking on it only the ice was thin so my foot went right through into water about minus ten degrees."

i hope that's not something you plan on doing regularly...
sounds like a cool trip! i wish my school did stuff like that. they occasionally do go-and-see days but never anything like what you did. at least not to my knowledge.
the icecream thing is a bit worrying, although maybe the people are just more trusting than most. still it is a bit silly to take icecream from someone who offers it to you for free out of a window. come to think of it that sounds exactly like something i'd do so i can't really talk.
that taxi thing is funny. gunna have to remember that one.
i've got loads of essays and stuff to do at the moment and this weekend is exeat weekend so i'll not have a chance of doing them then. going to one of my friends house with a group of people for a 'gathering'. should be really cool! but it does mean i'm going to have to do all of my urgent preps tonight and i'm supposed to be going to the 6.2 devised plays. oh well.
by the way aren't youtechnically a student now anyway?
does that mean they don't do monty python stuff at all now? tell me footlights is still going! please!! that's one of my main reasons for wanting to go to Cambridge in the first place!

Not sure about Footlights, but the Pembroke Smoker was knocked down. One of my friends was devastated.
Hmm, I have a bad track record of rivers. I usually fall into them a lot. Not on purpose, you understand, just trying to cross them by jumping from slippery rock to slippery rock, or crawling across a tree trunk, or walking on them when they're frozen...
IT'S SNOWING! I'm excited!
The taxi thing was hilarious... I was just on the wrong end of it. They recorded all our reactions on MP3 and they're threatening to play it in the common room!
I suppose I'm technically a student, but it's not really the same since I live at home. So I can't sit up all night passing ice-cream to random strangers out my bedroom window. We told them we were from Northern Ireland and they said that speaking with a Northern Irish accent increased your chance of getting a girlfriend by 50%. Not quite sure why, but there you go. I hate my accent, it sounds so stupid. The students all made us say 'How now brown cow' because they thought it sounded funny.
By the way, what's exeat weekend? Another thing like prep?

an exeat is when a student, normally one who boards, takes the weekend off and leaves the school. people can go normally whenever they want ut once a year my school has a compulsory exeat where all the people have to leave by 2 on friday and can't come back until the sunday evening. not sure why they say we MUST be off the premesis by 2 or whenever but that's just how it is. most people call is the 'long weekend'. our school only has 1 a year but places like canford have 1 a term i think. i don't really understand it much but it doesn't really matter, i'm having a long weekend with my friends and i'm really looking forward to it!
if i'm ever with you remind me to keep you away from rivers and the like. i'm not a qualified lifeguard and i pretty much such at first aid...i can swim quite well though.
i want snow! it's really cold here and it's been foggy for the past 4 days and they say it'll snow soon but that means it'll probably snow over long weekend and melt before we get back which would suck.
when i was in 3rd form is snowed for the rugby house matches. that was fun. i was the only 3rd former in the team, it snowed that morning, played in the afternoon and it all melted before lunch the next day!
i feel like a student because i can't go home very often.
i love irish accents! my aunt's irish and she's absolutely mad (and really short). it's so funny when she laughs because she sounds both really funny and scarily evil.
i don't think i have an accent but a few years back people thought i was a bit camp. i think i've managed to phase that out now because people i've met recently haven't commented on it.

So they throw you out of school for a weekend? Do you have to book into a hotel or something? Weird. Have fun though!
Keeping me away from rivers would probably be a good thing, because I can't actually swim very well. I think I got my 50 metres badge in P7 (that's the last year of primary school in case it's different over there). But that's been it. If we go to Cambridge together, don't let me step in rivers again. Oh wait, you're not allowed to meet people from the internet in case you turn out to be some creepy stalker.
There was about half an inch of snow here, which was really pathetic. And still some people pretended they couldn't come into school because of the snow. Skivers. I had to walk in. (Sorry, I just like this smiley.) It's all melted now anyway.
Last year on our sports day there was an absolute downpour, thunder and everything. We got soaked. The teachers made us stand in the PE store ("Oh look! Lightning! Let's all go stand in a big metal box!") but then hail started and we had to run for it into school. It was great fun though.
I like Irish accents (Top of the morning, begorrah! To be sure, to be sure!) but the 'Norn Iren' one isn't as nice. Maybe it's because I'm used to it - all the English people seemed to like it.

getting slight deja-vu now owing to the fact that i was replying to your posting earlier and then some reception woman came into the IT room and asked me to do a tour because the prefects who were supposed to be doing it. you won't understand what i mean by a tour, basically it's when prospective parents and the like come to look around the school and get shown around by 6th formers. normally they use 6.2 but they didn't turn up so this woman was running around looking for people to do the tour and she found me in here halfway through a posting.
anyway, what i was going to say before i was so rudely interrupted was something about the exeat.
oh yeah, i remember now.
in extreme cases like with foreign or overseas people who don't have any friends they can stay at school over the weekend, but that would be really bad because there's nothing to do and there's no-one else in, unlike other weekends when it just seems like there's no-one else in and i start getting the feeling that there's a large area of the school that's being kept secret from me...
it was a really good weekend for me. my friend's mum is a VERY good cook and we got enough sleep despite going to bed around 3 on friday and 2 on saturday. on friday night we spent half an hour outside looking at the stars which were really bright and we had a group moment together. (admittedly we were trying to make a moment and it took a few attempts because someone kept laughing about it.) saturday night was a bit weird though. after a few drinking games when everyone was feeling relaxed and happy (not plastered, we ran out) one of the girls got upset about the fact that her family is moving to the Sudan next January and we were trying to comfort her about it and she then moved onto the relationship with her mum and let me tell you i suddenly don't like her mum very much.(this isn't the friend who's house we were staying at by the way. her mum's cool!)
anyway it was rather emotional and i'm hoping she's ok now but she brought up a lot of issues that she said afterwards even she didn't know were there. i think it was good for her to get it all out of her system though.
i loved the junior school swimming stuff. things like swim 4 lengths and tread water for a minute. they were so cool. i got to some stupidly advanced stage where i had to swim something like 64 lengths and tread water for 4 minutes with one hand and swim 2 lengths with clothes on. those were the days.
i'm only not allowed to meet people because of my mum and when i'm at uni i'm an adult anyway. plus only young people, mostly girls, get done by internet stalkers. if one tried to do me they'd look at and probably think again. then leave. i'll be fine as long as i stand there and look mean. don't worry, i'm sure you're not a creepy stalker.
we had about 2 inches ish here on friday and now it's all melted apart from the large block of black ice in the middle of the firsts rugby pitch which used to be a large snowball and didn't melt properly.
i love rain storms. there was one a few years ago here and i was walking around in it. it was great! i love rain!
"begorrah!" <--eh? the rest i get but that one's new to me. i like accents but happen to me useless at them myself.
on exeat yesterday we were at supper and someone mentioned that the headmaster wants the west side story people to do some of the songs in assembly. i'm told that i went bright red at this point and nearly had a panic attack. i think i did too. and it turns out everyone else knew this but me! thanks a bunch guys, cheers for filling me in! i know i shouldn't be nervous because it won't be as hard as doing it on stage but it is just as hard, plus there's no spotlight so i'll be able to see everyone.
p.s. sorry this posting is so long.
p.s.s. is a cool smiley!

I'm sure you'll be great!
"Begorrah" is one of those words that Irish people are meant to say but never do. Like "och aye the noo" in Scotland or "spiffing" in England.

You don't say spiffing, do you?
The exeat sounds great! Next time you want to do something funny, get a load of ice-cream and a harmonica, and get someone to sit on the windowsill playing the harmonica while you ask random strangers if they want ice-cream. That was the best laugh I've had for ages.
Hope your friend's doing OK, it's good that she's able to talk to people about it & you can help her with it.
At the risk of sounding really, really stupid, what's a 6.2?
I loathed the junior swimming. I can only swim on my back and I can swim fine on my back (if not very quickly) so they put me in the beginners group and I had to do all this stupid beginners stuff and I still can't swim on my front. The only good thing was that our swimming teacher was called Mrs Pike, which I thought was a fantastic name for a swimming teacher (pike as in the fish).
I'm not a creepy stalker! And if you are, you've put an awful lot of time into developing your character. Anyway if we're at Cambridge together there'll be other people there too so it's OK.
I love rain too! When it's raining everyone else runs squealing through the playground with files over their heads screaming "My hair's getting wet!" (and that's only the guys ). And I'm wandering round in circles with my head in the air and an inane grin on my face going, "Rain!" Same when it snows - everyone else starts moaning about not getting to work and I'm out building snowmen.
That bit about snow was really just an excuse to use the smiley again.

"I'm sure you'll be great!"
at what? i already did the tour.(took me ages to work out what you were talking about there)
i sometimes say spiffing if i'm pretending to be posh. or if i'm trying to confuse someone with big words. i like doing that, it makes me look clever.
next exeat i'll try that. or sooner. not sure where i canget a harmonica though.
she's ok now. i think she's spoken to her mum about it and cleared some things up. she stayed at my other friend's house on sunday night as well after we all went back to school and if i know the other friend like i do then she will have cheered her up. she's good at that.
6.2 is the upper sixth form year. i thought i went through this but it might have been in a different thread. it's the same as year 13. i'm year 12 which is 6.1 or lower sixth at some schools. below that is 5th form, 4th form and 3rd form. (no 2nd or 1st. don't know why)
Mrs. Pike. that's almost as good as my swimming teachers, Mr and Mrs Lakeman. i remember that he always used to wear sandals on the poolside and his toenails were horrific!
guys here are so vain, although i don't think i've seen any running around with folders over their heads. there was this one guy though who used to carry around an umbrella on rainy days. he's the one whos part i took in the musical because he got expelled. at the beginning i thought he was alrite and we got on really well but then he started getting really touchy-feely with EVERYONE which was a little weird and people started not liking him, then he get himself and another guy expelled and messed up the musical so a lot of people hate him now.
no connection at all, but he was irish too. and a vegetarian. i couldn't live without meat. maybe sometimes but i couldn't give up bacon sandwiches or roast sunday lunches.
i haven't built a snowman in years. it snowed here the day we left for the exeat. in the early morning it was snowing but by lunch there weren't any clouds and the sun was shining and it all melted later that day. all that is apart from the giant snowball/boulder which is still sitting in the middle of the 1sts rugby pitch. that should be fun in practice later today.
(<--favourite smiley.)

Actually I meant at the singing, but never mind. Glad your friend's doing better.
We have lower and upper sixth instead. But we have 1st and 2nd year too. Weird.
Sometimes I think I'd like to be a vegetarian, but I like meat too much. I won't eat duck though. In Cambridge they made us eat pheasant, and it was disgusting.
I'd better go cos I'm meant to be writing a report of the Cambridge trip and someone's just phoned and told me I'm taking a Bible study on Friday. Eek.

some schools finish at year 6 so people move on to year 7 and 8 at secondary schools which would be 1st and 2nd year. probably. i think we just start at 3rd form to fit in.
i have thought about veggies. it can't actually be that healthy can it? obviously if you pig out on meat then you'll get unhealthy, but that's the same with anything. if you eat a balanced diet of meat and veg etc. then that would be more healthy than just eating greens the whole time because you have more proteins and stuff like that, plus it tastes so much better. i sometimes feel that if my plate doesn't have any meat on it it doesn't feel like an actual meal.
why won't you eat duck? it's the nicest bird there is! i don't mind eating ducks because they get quite a good life compared to some stuff, like chickens. never tried pheasant though.
good luck with the bible study. gotta go now.

I suppose you have all the meat substitutes like Quorn and stuff but it's not quite the same. Although having heard about what goes into our school cafeteria's chicken burgers I nearly became a vegetarian. I just don't eat meat in the cafeteria any more. Plus it's ridiculously expensive - one fifty for a small plate of chips that are 90% grease and a tiny bit of potato in the middle to hold it all together. Grr. Sorry, current hobby horse.
Not sure why I won't eat duck. It has something to do with the fact that ducklings are so cute. It's like tuna and dolphin - people who buy dolphin-friendly tuna don't want dolphins killed, but they don't mind killing tuna. Why? Because dolphins are smarter and cuter. The story of humanity.
Actually, that sounds quite good. I might write it down.
I've just done a survey in my politics class and found out that I'm a radical left-winger. This disturbs me slightly. I'm not sure yet whether it's good or bad, but people have started to call me a Communist.
Don't try pheasant. It made me sick. Actually, I think it was the out-of-date prawn crackers (this was pointed out to me just after I'd eaten a whole bag), but I'm blaming the pheasant.
Had better go and prepare the Bible study. I hope no-one wants anything too profound because I only had two days to write it.

most of the 'meat' around nowadays, especially in fast food places, is under suspicion about the actual meat content. McDonald's is disgusting for the most part, burger king is better but now by much, and kfc isn't too bad if you get something that's a wing or a leg because you know it's actually part of a chicken and the bad stuff is on the outside in the battery stuff.
our canteen sometimes serves these large meaty things that are like burgers (but not much) and they call them steakettes. they look like giant tumours and if you poke one with a fork without even stabbing it, so just press the flat of the fork down on the meat, loads of grease and horrible liquid oozes out of it.
ducks are really cute but so are calves, cows, sheep, lambs, chicks (not so much chickens), pigs especially, and horses. you are probably going to have a moral outburst now because of what i'm about to say but i'm going to take that chance. i've eaten a horse burger before when i was in france. i didn't really know what it was but i was pretty sure i didn't want any of the other stuff on the menu. having tried it i can say that it wasn't anything special, but if the subject ever comes up here people regard the eating of something that youcan ride on as disgusting. you can ride on a cow if you really want and there are other animals that do the things horses do, so why are they so special? i suppose this is like the dolphin thing really. i'm not saying i'm defending the eating of horse meat before you ask. i did it once and if i can help it i won't do it again, but me not eating that burger wouldn't have brought that horse back to life or stopped it from being killed in the first place.
sorry, that was a bit long. don't know where most of it came from either.
the thing about dolphins could be because they are really intelligent and tuna aren't plus probably taste better. i don't know really. some people have very weird reasons for not wanting to eat certain animals. to be honest if you were left alone with a horse or a dolphin and you were going to starve to death then, realistically, you would probably end up eating one of them wouldn't you?
which wing was hitler on? because that's probably the one you want to stay away from. i don't know where i'd be but i'm afraid that if i did a survey like that i'd be rather surprised at the outcome.
good luck with the bible study. i'm going to get back to trying to find a teacher about a dvd whilst avoiding all the other teachers who will probably tell me to go and get a haircut.

Sounds a lot like our cafeteria. The curry sauce is this thick brown ooze with lumps in it. And there's a rumour that the chicken soup is all the leftovers put into a blender and whizzed into a liquid. I'm not sure if it's true or not, but it tastes like it might be.
I'm not all that worried about you eating horse. I mean, I probably wouldn't, but that's just me. My cousin goes down to the continental market every day at lunch and buys kangaroo burgers and ostrich burgers (it's only on for a week, thank goodness).
Hitler was right-wing, so that's not so bad. But Stalin was left-wing, so that's probably not too good either. In Northern Ireland we don't have right and left wing anyway, we just have nationalist/unionist, so I couldn't vote for the Greens if I wanted to.
Sounds like a familiar story about the haircut, there's been a crackdown in my school and all the guys are being forced to get their hair cut or wash the gel out in the toilets. And my friend keeps getting detention for her lip stud, it's getting quite annoying. Thankfully I'm OK. Because girls are allowed long hair! Gender discrimination all the way!

girls get it so easy.
*ducks before the array of thrown objects hits him*
well you do in schools. this one anyway.
that thing about the leftovers, they actually do do that here. no joke, if there's bacon left over from breakfast they put it in sandwiches for lunch. if there's sausages they put them out in the cold meat section at supper, and on fridays when there's continental breakfast and some croissants are left over they put some cream on them and serve them as dessert at lunch. whipped cream does NOT make an old croissant worthy of calling a dessert, especially since they're tiny anyway.
and they put cellery in EVERYTHING! any pie of stew will have old cellery in it, and most of the stews are just the old stews mixed together with fresh E-numbers.
it's probably not that bad but they're going through a period lately where everything is rather nasty. i actually heard the cook we call 'evil pudding lady' say that she likes black pudding but wouldn't eat the stuff the school does. if they won't eat their own food then what are we supposed to do!?!
*rant over*
sorry about that.
i like ostriches. i want to ride one one day. i'm going to put that on my list actually, along with 'see the northern lights', 'swim with dolphins' and 'lunge wildly at the pope'. (just to see what would happen ).
what does being a left or right winger entail? what does it actually mean? and who are the Greens? if was in i'd run for the Monster Raving Loony Party. some of their policies are surprisingly clever.
there's a girl here who has a tongue stud but other that that i don't think there are many people with studs or tattoos or anything. there was a girl who had a tinkerbell tattoo on her stomach but she's left now. that was rather cool.

Yeah, it's true about girls and uniform. We get to wear rings, earrings and long hair, but guys don't. On the other hand, we have to wear skirts and you get to wear trousers. I don't know whether you'd like to be able to wear skirts or not , but I don't.
The cafeteria sounds gross. At least I only have one meal a day at ours, and even then I don't go every day, I usually have sandwiches in the common room.
About lunging wildly at the pope, you would probably be arrested and stuck in prison. Later, the pope, being a nice person, would come and visit you and forgive you. You would be famous. But maybe not in a good way.
Loads of people here have tattoos and stuff, but most of them are smart enough to have them on their upper arms or somewhere the teachers can't see them. *Shudders* Eek, sounds painful.
Radical left wing is communism, but I don't think I'm that radical. I think left wing basically means you think everyone is equal, you like democracy, you want human rights and you don't like war. But I'm probably not very left wing morally because most left wingers want abortion, stem cell research and gay marriage, none of which I agree with. Right wingers like capitalism, nationalism, the class system and traditional moral values. In Britain the BNP is radically right wing, the Conservatives are slightly right wing, the Lib Dems in the middle, Labour slightly left wing and the Greens radically left wing.
Phew. A level politics has taught me something then.

the girls here in sixth form can wear trousers if they want to. i don't think a guy's ever tried to wear a skirt though (and i don't want to be the first one to try it)
what if i was talking to the pope and i asked him nicely if i could lunge at him? if he said yes i would do it and then thank him and probably leave being the reasonable individual that i am.
i don't think i'd ever want a tattoo because it's always going to be there and when you get old it fades and goes all mushy. piercings are weird too. why do people enjoy poking holes in themselves and then putting little pieces of metal into them? what happens if your earing gets caught in something and then you pull it out? how painful would that be!!*shudder*
politics sounds fun. why don't you agree with stem cells research? i don't like marriage in general very much and i think abortions shouldn't be necessary but there you go.
i'm late. aaaargh!!!

Every other school in the world gives their sixth formers more privileges except us! We're not even allowed down the street at lunch time.
Hmm, I'm not sure about the lunging thing. You might be excommunicated or something. And how would you get to talk to him in the first place? Get a bishop costume from a fancy dress shop?
I don't think I'd ever get a tattoo. Same with body piercing, but I have my ears pierced. It wasn't that painful. I don't wear hoop earrings though in case they catch on something. Or the really big heavy ones.
I don't agree with stem cell research because I think babies are still people even when they aren't born, and using people as guinea pigs can't be right. Same with abortion, it's just the same as murder. Why don't you like marriage?
Hope you get there in time! Would it help if you ed?
(I'm sorry, I couldn't resist putting him in)