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

Howzit!
Satistically, people in SA have more chance of being struck by lightning than being attacked by a in the sea. Now that doen't mean that you can swim out into a murky sea without a care in the world if you know what I mean . There are many hundreds of times as many people standing on land than there are swimming in the sea - so lies, damned lies and statistics!
On the whole though, swimming within the breakers in clear water is safe. We don't permit Great White, Zambezi, Dusky, Ragged Tooth or Hammerhead to spoil a day at the beach! It's far more likely to be 'stroked' by a bluebottle than nibbled by a .

Sun on bare skin! Just enough breeze to keep you from getting hot and nobody to tell you to put your top back on again... We literally spent three hours on the beach without a single person walking into sight.
I'd go back there to live anyday! (Have a look at my personal space journal entry on sea shells) Happy days!

Ooh! That sounds lovely! I'm sooo jealous! I used to collect sea shells etc but the authorities ask people here in the UK not to take stones and shell from beaches nowadays.

John and I spent our honeymoon in Malta, where he took and passed his advanced PADI Open Water Scuba Diving certificate. John also taught me to snorkel and dive on a breath. I'm frightened of heights though and he had to hold my hand when we swam over a reef that suddenly dropped off.

We have great scuba sites here too! The Cape coast is littered with wreck from the 1600's onwards! Somewhere of East London (Eastern Cape Provice) you could look for a Vickers Vicount that went down in the sea in the sixties! Dive deep enough and you'll find coelacanth (sp?)

I'll look for some 'eat-your-heart-out' type pix to e-mail, both biking and other scenery types Happy days!

I've got an e-mail button at my space - count me in for that

The best day on the beach that I can recall was one filled with other people. The place was soooooo busy there was hardly an uncovered square yard of sand. It was a beautiful not too warm day, light breeze, and a guy just a few yards away playing Bob Marley's greatest hits on a ghetto blaster. What an atmosphere - the music totally made the day for me. I'd always had a bit of a soft spot for Reggae, but this just totally did it for me. I went out and bought the CD soon after



Bassman

I sent some biking-type pix by e-mail to Gwennie + Bassman - hope you got them. I'm sending them as singles as some are almost 2Mb and I know some mail servers reject above that!
If they are problematic, let me know and I'll reduce file size or zip or whatever.

FLASH! FLASH! FLASH! etc.
All my e-mails were returned undeliverable - content too long!
It appears our server has been infected with a Shakira worm and it is replicating!
That will serve the IT department right for installing 'thin client' workstations without the necessary antivirus protection 'stuff'.
I refused to accept one and sit with my trusted old *ompaq laptop with extremities added

How annoying (and terribly inconvenient too!)!

I hope they sort it all out soon. There's no limit on my inbox by the way...Perhaps I should rephrase that...

I've had FOUR Emails with a virus attached just today. At the moment they're coming in at about one per day from anonymous hotmail or yahoo accounts.

Fortunately, my Norton anit-virus software quarantines them and I block the senders by deleting any further messages from our server, but I'm wondering whether some prankster is sending them deliberately...

I've sent an invitation to you WR via Fotango to view some of our photographs (did you received it okay?) and if you're interested in children and four-legged beasties Baseman as opposed to two-wheeled s, then I'll be more than happy to repeat the exercise for you too.

I've asked John to dig out some pictures on his toys...I mean bikes and will upload them to Fotango as well so you can see what I have to compete with.

I'll check on Monday - my server at work being down, I took the opportunity to leave early (push off early tomorrow's Saturday) which meant I could get in some shopping for and for the Bike Club meeting tonight. The liquor store was competely cleaned out of Old Brown Sherry - the favourite warm-me-up for bikers in winter!

I have just got back from the meeting and can't get into my bed. In my absence, Jenny has arranged three dogs around her under a rug like hot water bottles! I'll have to chuck them off the bed just to get in under the duvet, That will raise them from their and then they'll have to be put outside first to water the grass. If I don't, they'll just wake me at 2:30 am to be let out then anyway, so I'll get some hootoo stuff in first and then go raise sleeping s! Goodnight!

I don't think my e-mail account will accept anything over a Meg. I know I can't post any more than 3 attachments totalling a Meg

It's a bit inconvenient at times.



Bassman

Can't you change your account Bassman? Freeserve have never given me any problems with Email attachments in the four years that we've been using them.

It sounds as though Jenny had the right idea WR! John won't allow the s on our bed, but he doesn't have any say regarding the s, unless they pad the top of our heads in the mornings to wake up and feed them at which point they're unceremoniously ejected.

On occasion, Sofie has actually crawled in UNDER the duvet at the bottom of the bed! Kiki the dachshund sleeps in the lounge on the sofa, but will sneak into the bedroom after Jenny goes to sleep and pinch her slippers to sleep with! Gemma, the Dob-Rott's ambition in life is to be a lap-dog - she tries at the slightest opportunity to sit on anyone's lap !
Suzy, the bee-you-tee-full , often curls up in my laptop carry case - try and get cat hair out of those! I roll masking tape sticky side out around my fingers and dab it off.
I also have a hotmail address ([email protected]) which I check once or twice a week - usefull when you're travelling and want to keep in touch from any internet café anywhere in the world!

My server at work just has an anti-spam filter that rejects messages with over 50 addresses, and attachments over 2Mb.

I'll send the invitation to view our some of our pictures via Fotango to your hotmail addy too in case the first one doesn't get through.

I'm currently scanning pictures that I managed to locate of John's old 750 mk4 Norton (1972) production race replica and will post the link when I've uploaded it.

I have problems with muddy paw prints over my scanner's cover, printer and monitor top. I've had to invest in covers and keep piles of junk on the scanner to keep the s off it.

Doesn't sharing your bed with your pets leave give a flea problem WR?

When we lived in NZ, we had terrible problems with fleas due to the warmer climate (in the UK the winter months kill of most insects) and they got everywhere whilst nothing seemed to get rid of the little s!

We had a similar problem on our return to the UK and after months of spraying the carpets, furniture, cats & dogs, our vet introduced us to Frontline, which has certainly done the trick.

We've never had a flea problem - they are around, but the whole house is tiled and it's never been anything like a problem.
Steven sits and looks for ticks on the s and regulaly when the TV programs are boring. Once in a blue moon he finds a flea but for every flea we find twenty ticks or so. THey are a problem out here as they can cause billery and death in two days!
Somehow our house seems pest-free. No cockroaches (particluar attention to detail in designing our kitchen cupboards with no spaces for them to live) and no rats + mice. Our cavity walls which I put in for thermal performance now have ants nesting which I will have to address this winter, but otherwise no other problems.
Africa has come pretty big which can be frightening (Alan is rip-his-clothes-off arachnaphobic) but mostly harmless. We use no poisons in the garden and very little in the house so once in a while you'll find a rain wandering over the floor, up the wall or along the ceiling. We just catch them in a jam jar and free them again outside.
Hadeda Ibis (big indigenous birds) keep our garden pretty free of snails and crickets - hence the aversion to poisons! We were awakened at five o'clock one summer morning by a wierd sound followed by a loud splash. Peering out to the swimming pool we found that an egyptian goose had just check in for a short stay - and we live in the middle of suburbia!

It must be wonderful and it makes our UK suburban life sound so dull! My son is frightened of s and other creepy-crawlies, so it's just as well it's relatively quiet here. We do have ticks, but I've never heard of them carrying dangerous diseases (to humans) in the UK. My parents live in the New Forest in southern England and because of all the heather and gorse with wild ponies and free-ranging sheep and cattle, ticks are absolutely rife.

We've got quarry tiles in our kitchen and utility room floors, but the rest of the house has carpet covered floor boards, which with our central heating is a wonderful environment for fleas. Most of the boards are new as John renovated the house but some are the original 1900 timbers. Also, because there are disused coal fires in the bedrooms upstairs, there coal dust everywhere and no matter how much you clean, there's always more the next time you look.

We always wonder wotsitlike over there!
Mostly SA flock go there to live like churchmice while earning lotsa Pounds and come back to buy a house!
Gotta leave office for an hour to have my pic taken for a new access card to the building. Back in 60!

Everywhere is Dullsville at some time or another!
I'll drop you a line at your homepage to talk about our house - so look there for further 'chat'

WR, I got the pics - many thanks. Looks like you had brilliant weather for your jaunt.



Bassman

The boys (and some girls) are going on the Winter Run starting tomorrow. We've chosen the coldest weekend in a long time with snow on the Drakensberg and negative noght time temps predicted.
I'm joining them on Sunday for lunch with a F650?thread="smiley - biggrin" title="biggrin" class="smiley" src="http://www.h2g2.com/h2g2/skins/Alabaster/images/Smilies/f_biggrin.gif"/>

I'll look forward to that.

I heard a story of some guys out in the cold. They had to stop for the obligatory ablutions, one of the guys - cold hands, cold nether regions, pulled the shirt tail out of his leathers and pee'd all down the inside of his leathers....



Bassman

It's like doing a good job where I work - it gives you a warm feeling, but nobody notices at all

Story of a couple who took the donkey cart to the church to renew their vows after 50 years. On the way back he stops for a leak at a big tree. Wife recalls that he did the very same thing on their honeymoon. He replies: 'Yes, but then I hooked it under the wire to stop peeing in my eye - now I have to put it over the wire to stop peeing on my shoes!'