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

Peel sandstone. Would that be from Peel city? Do you know if it's marine or desert sandstone? What's my name in latin?
Frogbit.

Hi frogbit!

The Peel red sandstone is roughly the same age as the early carboniferous limestone which also crops up on the Island -i.e. old, and often referred to as "old red sandstone". I don't know if it's marine or desert in origin; marine is more likely, given its surrounding strata. It's variable, very red, often extremely hard (quite impossible to drill into with a powerful hammer drill...) but, at its softest, can weather very quickly. It's used, in massive 2'sqare blocks, for building houses like mine

You are Hydrocharis morsus-ranae - a nice little plant which I'm usually quite pleased to see, except that in the milder areas of the country you can get a bit invasive.. also, you have a real pest of a cousin

The Old Red sanstone in this area (Somerset) is marine, laid down by delta system similar to that of the present day Nile, about 300 million yrs ago. Your house sounds great. My cousin is just fine - it's me that's the pest.

why thank you - the house is indeed well funky. Although (*growl*) it'd be a darn sight funkier if it had plaster on the kitchen wall, and a cooker... patience patience...

the troublesome cousin isn't really a cousin at all - I was thinking of floating pennywort, which, in its earlier stages, resembles frogbit and grows in similar places. Avoid it like the plague! Don't let anyone chuck it into reens or ponds or ditches! It's quite attractive (& popular with aquarium keepers) but lethally competitive once unleashed... bye bye aquatic plant diversity (even frogbit!). It's one of several spp that are really getting problematic. are you the kind that notices whots in ponds etc.? If so, wots the situation round your way?

Well, I can understand your lack of patience about the cooker. . .
I love ponds. I'm just about to move house. I didn't like the layout of the house, but it has a large garden which has been an organic veg patch for about 50 yrs, and a pond with frogs and newts in. The pond swung it for me.
What are things like down my way? A bit too big to cover actually. I'm on the fringes of the somerset levels. They seem to be doing fine, but as usual, the farmers need keeping an eye on for nitrates and pesticides. . . I've written a couple of articles about the area, if you're interested, goto my space and have a look under guide entries.
Please tell me more about where you live. I didn't know Mann had sattelites. It sounds great. How's the new instrument?
Frogbit.

Hi, interesting to read the articles about your patch. There are one or two about the Isle of Man, but nothing in any great detail.

I don't know how much you know about the Island, so I'll assume Not Much, as it's virtually never mentioned in the UK, and isn't covered by the BBC most of the time. It's a Crown Dependency with its own parliament, Tynwald. It's the oldest democratic parliament on earth, very early votes for women, very politically stable, no party politics at all, generally rather old fashioned & rather behind the UK in legislation (e.g. equality laws and wildlife laws are very young), but capable of being innovative when it feels like it (eg. abolishing pub opening hour restrictions!). It's a completely different country from the UK, with its own legislation, postage etc., but retains links through the Governor General (the Queen's representative - rarely seen and even more rarely heard here). It's not part of the EU at all, except for the purposes of customs administration. So no handouts for farmers etc., and no Habitats Directive or other EU law. The UK can impose laws if it thinks the Island isn't adequately covered, but hardly ever does (I think the legalisation of homosexuality and abolition of corporal punishment were about the only examples).

The Island is four times the size of Jersey, i.e. about 12 miles across and 30 miles long. It's about 80 miles from Liverpool, much nearer to parts of Scotland. Several planes and ferries come here each day (about 40 planes on an average day) so there's a lot of contact with the UK, also with Eire and Jersey. The population is 76000, 48 percent of whom are Manx born. If you want to work here, you need a work permit unless you're officially a "Manx worker". The tax is quite a lot less than the UK, but beware: house prices, the cost of getting away, and living prices soon wipe out the difference.

There's virtually every type of British habitat here, from mountains to coastal heath to lime quarries etc. Around two thirds of the land is uninhabited, more or less traditionally farmed and very attractive. The coasts are clean and really nice - excellent beaches, one of the main chough strongholds in the British Isles, seals, porpoises etc. Wildlife law is somewhat behind that of the UK.

Although insular and traditional in many ways, the Manx government is keen on e-commerce because of the finance sector, and other business possibilities. We have ADSL lines fitted by the government for free at the moment (though sadly not the rental!) and the overall communications level is about the best it could be, with talk of trials on 3G mobile phones being tried out here. Apart from finance, the main source of income is tourism (esp. road racing, because there's no speed limit) and the film industry.

and the ice cream's really great!

And there's no Foot & Mouth so far, fortunately.

On the subject of the new instrument, it's proving great fun. If you don't know what chalumeau is, imagine a treble recorder with a clarinet reed and a couple of keys, with the range of the lower notes on a clarinet. Very boopy. Good job Sea Bean Cottage has two foot thick walls

Wow. Well I *didn't* know much about Man, but now I have an inkling (pauses to scratch inkling under chin). This sounds very much like a compressed entry to me. There's only one cure I'm afraid, and that's to gently tease it apart, firmly insert a collection of other words in the now exposed gaps, and post it to peer revue.

Chalumeau. Boopy. 2 words that get on well.
Look, I have to ask. 'Sean Bean Cottage'?
When I read the word 'Sean' on it's own, I mentally pronounce it 'Shaun'. However, when I see it next to 'Bean' I pronounce it 'Seen' Seen Been.

Bye.

SEA bean!!

if you don't know what a sea bean is, check out the web link on my space... and the links connected to it

the "article" will have to be all yours for the time being (although if anyone else asks me about the Island, I'll spam it to them...) NB there's also a IoM web link on my page, in case you've a yen for more.

despite the frenetic touch-typing I don't have enough time to put together a proper article just yet.

SEA bean!!

if you don't know what a sea bean is, check out the web link on my space... and the links connected to it

the "article" will have to be all yours for the time being (although if anyone else asks me about the Island, I'll spam it to them...) NB there's also a IoM web link on my page, in case you've a yen for more.

despite the frenetic touch-typing I don't have enough time to put together a proper article just yet.

oops - stupid work computer!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaah!

you live, you learn!

Some of us just live.

y'mean you didn't learn anything from my blistering prose about the sizzling excitement of life on the Isle of Man?

well, at least you learned that chalumeaux sound boopy.
anywhere else you could pay good money for that kind of an education

I learned, I learned. . . .Jesus, you Manx are touchy.
Boopy - your description?
Now let's get this straight - Sea Bean Island is you creation, right?
Do you live on Man or a sattelite?
(I just know I'm asking for trouble here. . .)

Ha! well, you Brits are suspicious!

I live in a cottage called Sea Bean Cottage, on the Isle of Man. It's called Sea Bean Cottage because a) it's very near the beach and I like to think I might find some interesting drift seeds there *eventually*; and b) because, like a sea bean, I seem to have drifted around a lot, and it's probably about time I took root somewhere.

The cyber-island (which doesn't have a name) is, of course, my floating, ever-accessible homepage.

(at least, it's accessible whenever I can persuade a suitable computer to let me onto it. this is often a rickety and unreliable gangplank...)

Boopy is a legitimate* descriptive term for that which goes boop.

*to me

I trust this is all clear

Suspicious? All I asked was whether 'boopy' was your term. You Peel city boys have a reputation for piracy, I though you might have stolen it from somewhere
Never heard of a sea bean. Sounds interesting though.

D'you live near a coast? if so, you might be able to find some interesting drift seeds/sea beans yourself. The sea bean website (link on my page)has nice pictures of some of 'em. They do actually grow if you can get the shell off them and get fresh water in. wotchit though: if they get growing, some of these species are tropical vines which grow to about 20m

get enough and you could turn the Levels into a mangrove swamp

or do an original Jack 'n' the Beanstalk production...

Which bit of Cambridge?

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