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

Dreams are marvellous things. You can fly, speak (and understand) Portugese, even play the trumpet. I found myself waiting by the kitchen door outside my parents' house, and my instructions were to play the trumpet, which would cue somebody else (I can't rember who anymore, though it all made sense in the dream) to come out, and something crucial to the storyline would happen. I was at liberty to play anything I wanted, but even in a dream I knew I had never played a trumpet before, so I picked the easiest song I could think of, which was Arthur Sullivan's hymn "Onward Christian soldiers."

And, by gum, it worked! My playing wasn't as elegant as, say, Wynton Marsalis', but I was getting the notes in recognizable form. But maybe the neighbors were annoyed at hearing trumpet music, so the next thing I knew, I was walking toward the train station, trumpet in hand. I was still playing that trumpet, figuring that I would retain this newfound ability as long as I kept playing. But maybe the conductor of the first train that came along didn't relish having me on board, because he didn't stop at the station, preferring instead to go past and then make a U-turn to back to the start of the line.

Gosh, everubody's a crotoc!

How fascinating, do continue

Mover along, please... No buskers allowed in here!

Sabine Baring-Gould would have been proud of you. (Possibly also General William Booth.)

I've given to the Salvation Army many times, Dmitri. I've been listening to Baroque trumpet music lately. Maybe that unleashed a subconscious desire to play the trumpet myself. I used to know an old geezer on the top floor of a rooming house who, when the spirit moved him, would play his cornet even if it was 4:00 in the morning In his youth, he had been a close friend of Arthur Fiedler.

A Boston pop.

We had some loopy people in that place. There was a woman on the third floor who was completely out of her mind. She would stay up chain-smoking and watching TV well after midnight. One night she got tired of her TV, so she opened her window and threw it out. It landed in the alley behind the house, with such a loud bang that the guy in the ground floor room fell out of bed!

I have felt like that tonight, but I will not blame the BBC's sins on the electronics...

How, then, do you explain what the BBC does?