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

Hooray, half term is upon us! Full programme starting with two days at the seaside near la Baule for a lot of wind and rain I assume.

Yesterday I got a huge pile of books from amazon and read The History Boys (faber). Rather enjoyable, though less frothy than Forty Years on, more boys' genitals and general bathos, but who am I to complain? I am only a woman.

Perhaps it is the schoolmistress in me but I was shocked by the typos and the lax punctuation and syntax they had allowed in. No proof-readers these days are there?

"A stock vision of an undergraduate then (gleaned from movies like Robert Tatylor in 'A Yank at Oxford') was...". page viii

"Once there had been polished parquet floors the woodwork was of bright chestnut polish, and ..." page xviii

"abandon" (the noun) twice in the introduction (?)

"in the nick of time I began to get grips with it myself" page xxiv

"Ne soit pas timide" (should be "sois"). Other mistakes in French usage but that was the point. page 14 of the play itself.

Still it is very comforting to see misprints...

I know exactly what you mean. I pick them up in the law reports from time to time and find it immensely satisfying when I do. I saw 'perambulations' used instead of 'permutations' in a journal article a couple of weeks ago, and finding £5 on the pavement couldn't have pleased me more - the article was by a Yale Uni Professor in a Yale University book.


Douglas

R., October 26, 2005

Well it's a pretty kettle of fish. I can no longer use the journal facility as I now have two "researcher" identities and in one the link is inactive, and in the other the link is not even there. Duh!

Last week-end was exhausting after two months' uninterrupted hard work. What I liked best was the late 19th century villas in Le Pouliguen, the sea on the Côte Sauvage, blue as the Mediterranean under the sun (18°, incredible in late October), the walled city of Guérande, where I had never been before, and of course the villas in La Baule. O/H's youngest is now working as a vet in a clinic in the area and her partner (also a vet) is looking for work. They like the leisured pace and going to the market for oysters and the like. They had set their hearts on a house near Avignon but the banks weren't interested... Still they could have done worse.

We stopped at a Commonwealth war cemetery (war graves back-translated as "tombes de guerre", which is ludicrous). There are two in the area and many many unknown sailors or soldiers. Lawns manicured as always.

The weather has been so warm that we now have to eat up kilos of figs which are all ripening at speed. They are what Colette called "figues secondes" and ripen late, usually too late to escape the cold. Also the pears which I had encased in transparent plastic bags to protect them from wasps and birds, are now crying out to be eaten. With the pears, it's lose-lose : either the birds have them or we gather them too early and they never ripen. When they are ripe, they won't keep. It's a case of not having one's cake and not eating it, as with so many things in life.

Hi there Martine

Sorry to hear about your hootoo problem - you should email them, they are very helpful, in my experience.

cheers

dagesh

I have dagesh... Still no joy.