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

PS gis us a topic! A character even!

How about a contemporary Wife of Bath?

Was that just an 'off the cuff'? Or have you been lurking?
take care
boots

Off the cuff?
In the sock?

You're foul you know that!
It is early. I do not have enough staff to ensure I can be lazy all day and that is my first post of the morning!
take care
boots (off to look for extra hands any passing stranger will do!)

Alistair's gone then. No not that Alistair. My Alistair. He's gone to work. And good riddance.

5am, alarm. It sounds like a heart-attack and more or less induces one in me. But he's up and at it, keen as mustard, as if the USB would cease to operate if he wasn't piloting the cobalt desk, jabbering down the phone to Japan and Johannesburg. Like an atomic clock he is. Regular, dependable and utterly dull. Three esses follow. Shit Shower Shave. In that order. Once upon a time, we had four esses but now it's a brief fortnightly perfunctory ceremony of physical relief. Say "shag" to Alistair and he thinks "Axminster", or "Gannet", if he's feeling unusually quirky. Dickhead.

I used to get up with him, share breakfast, or even share the shower with him. But like his pate, the novelty quickly wore thin. Now I lay in bed and hear him ablute, descend, potter, break fast, ablute some more, leave.

Relief. 5:59am, he's through the door. In 48 minutes, Railtrack permitting, he'll be on the rattler, London-bound. I'll see him again at around 8 tonight. Huh, around 8. What am I saying? 7:53. I'll see him again at f*****g 7:53. Like yesterday, like tomorrow, like every f*****g day of the week.

Once upon a time, when first we dreamed of thatch cottages and rose covered pergolas, I hated the moment he left, and craved his return. Things are different now. On their head. Weekends aside, his diurnal cycle requires him to spend ten hours and six minutes in this house, of which six hours and 30 minutes we are asleep, and 59 minutes he is preparing to leave.

The balance, 2 hours 37 minutes, each evening is hell. For me. He's too wrapped up in his dead cat bounce to realise.

Still. In perspective, it is only 2 hours 37 minutes. Otherwise, I've got 13 hours 54 minutes of sheer unrestricted freedom to do as I please ...

Nice one trout...I do hope not base on anything remotely personal...she is dreadful! Excellent!
take care
boots

I don't know whether to have her in Laura Ashley with puffball sleeves and seducing the milkman or pushing a trolley full of asti spumanti 'round Sainsburys in a pastel coloured terry track suit.

Maybe there're two characters there. At least the latter one isn't bogged down in the miasma of borgeois snobbery that the other characters seemingly are.

And I researched. Looked it up in an encyclopaedia. There were 24 + 4 tales in the original work. So we've got a way to go.

T

Dear God the picture of both is brutal! says boots rushing to stuff any laura Ashley and track suits into closest bin! Rats clanked
over the asti!
Couldn't agree more with the two characters bit....actually wanted to know how Alaister dealt with the dreadful woman...perhaps he goes to lunch in those restaurants where men have to wear bibs? Or something completely different? A tranny who does the day shift in some club doesn't go near computers ever and earns his dosh by pimping...ok a bit extreme. Great work Trout and I do agree we need to open up the class war!
take care
boots

I'm really sorry about this, but I've completely lost it.

I started the day in the cocksure belief that I more or less understood what was going on vis-a-vis this planet, and in all the worthwhile threads thereupon.

I realise now that this was self-delusion. The fact that every goalpost moved sideways at once is clearly meant as punishment for my presumption.

So I admit it. I don't have a clue what any of you are going on about any more.

Who the hell are you all, anyway?

Pin ( to the power of )

Pin dear hootoo friend. I am assuming (and probably most incorrectly) that you (our guru) have not had the best of evenings. Trout and I are following, or at least trying to, in the footsteps of our guru/mentor/literary god. Perhaps tomorrow will be a better time to listen to your wisdom amd witty pearls. All I can say (without the experience of those more educated or probing) 'Don't regret the day and live the next with hindsight'
Tahe care old chum
boots

Boots, dear friend, you assume incorrectly (something you do with panache, incidentally; don't ever stop)

If I'm your guru, then Appropriate Deity help all of you.

No, it was an OK-evening. The nice man in the Chinese gave me a lot of food I didn't pay for, and I got a quick pint in down the pub before a very ugly lady began singing too loudly.

I guess I am a bit phased by stuff, but that happens. We're all a bit too precious sometimes. Impenetrability as a mark of , that kind of thing.

Not you though, Boots. No, not ever.

Y'know...I think bed might be a good idea.

(Hey, Trout! Sorry about pontificating in your message box. No, it means no such thing. Go look it up. Meanwhile, you don't mind if I sleep here, do you?)

*checks to make sure there are no crusty socks around, and...*

As you like Big Man.

(figuratively speaking, I know you're not a bipe)

Need a clean sock?

Hi gang. Have either of you seen the trailers for the new CTs? It looks as if they may be quite good, which is a tad depressing from our creative position. I think I am going to toddle off for a while and work on some two hander stuff (radio 4 is apparently looking for some) Will probably post to site so if you care to take up the challenge....
take care
boots

I am Edward Knight, Monarch of All I Survey, Öberführer of the luxury Teutonic car market throughout the whole of North Kent. Every new Mercedes sold between the Thames and the Escarpment, from Dartford to Dover, passes through my hands, and my books. Deutschland, exporting to Kent, Mercedes instead of doodlebugs. Progress, I like to think. Plus ça change.

All sorts venture into my showrooms, some less welcome than others. Generally, I know in an instant who can and who can't afford to buy Mercedes. The worst are the yesteryear wanna-bes, erstwhile young men with ambition and dreams. Now twenty years down the line, these Rover-driving five-day week failures replete with lame lies about how they are "... considering upgrading to a Merc ..." turn up in my showroom to run their unctuous mitts along sleek polished lines, leaving behind a trail of utterly irksome slug-like slime that will take a half a day to buff off. Middle-class, middle-aged, and middle-of-the-road, their professed enthusiasm is belied by mournful head-shakes and doleful sighs, will-o-the-wisp statements that these vehicles always have been, are, and always will be beyond their fiscal reach. Instead, in lieu of reality, they try to elicit from me a test-drive, a momentary sumptuously comfortable glimpse into the life that could've, should've been. Alas (for them) they are ever so politely declined "... as a matter of policy ..." and so they leave, saying they'd really "... prefer to Buy British anyway ...", and will be off "... to look at Jags". 'To look at' having been the pertinent stated operation, I mutter some unintelligible good riddance and ensure that someone escorts them off the premises before they sully another vehicle with their touch.

Then of course, there are the nouveau riche, bankers mostly, loathsome individuals with loud ties, even louder mouths, and the audacity to take calls on their ubiquitous mobile-telephones mid-demonstration. Heidi, secretary and cello-playing object of my singular nocturnal fantasy, is trained to charge (nylon abrading nylon clearly audible) briskly up to me during these events to report that "Mr. Schmidt from Stuttgart is on line nine" thereby giving me opportunity to beat retreat, replaced in the showroom by Gordon, monotonal ginger-headed technical sales advisor. Inevitably, at this stage we've already got the sale. A foppish-fringed fool and his money are easily parted.

Occasionally too, we get professional sportsmen, footballers mostly who come along with their ridiculous look-at-me haircuts and mutton-dressed-as-lamb wives. They browse in their overstated clothes, mugged by fashion, as ovine as the nylon-clad flock that attends their weekly service, and then order by phone. His and Hers. Nauseatingly quaint, but good for business nonetheless ... "Danny Eagles drives Mercedes", mindlessly fulfilling the stereotype.

All of them I can't abide. No more than peasants really, easy prey to the marketing men. Their interest in these vehicles is utterly superficial. The middle-aged twat who can't afford one is oh-so menopausally trying to impress his neighbour; the cobalt-dealer is engaged in a cycle of one-upmanship with the suit on the uranium desk, and the footballer is fulfilling an image he has learned by rote. They have no imagination. No knowledge. No class. Unable to tell the 300SL Flügeltürer from the 1961 Heckflosse, they've seen sleek lines, metallic finish, a three-painted star and think that Mercedes is their deal. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, maybe I should keep my lips sealed; after all it keeps my cellar stocked and my belly full.

Hey, Ma! He came back!!!
(I always knew he would...)

Pin *later, yeah?*

...oh, btw, I forgot to tell you, we're doing Little House on the Prairie now...

Dear Melissa
How are Ma and Pa?
It's fine in the city but I think of you all every day. Is Gramps still wandering around in his Woolmart dungarees? I bet the Olsens are still making Ma's life difficult..No new fabric for the barn dance dress eh?
City life is kinda strange and I do miss you all. The paper is good though. I had to go out yesterday to interview a Man who's dog had bitten a lady on the side walk. She was mighty upset but I think I made it better. I told her that the dog was surely unhappy with his owner and had only bitten her in a friendly like manner 'cos he kinda wanted to be rescued. It was all resolved in the end. She took the little mutt home and I got invited round to dinner. Not as good as Ma's of course, but not bad for city folk.
I still don't have a publisher for my book, but folks have been kind and say I write pretty well. I have heard of a great new writer's competition...the Turner prize they call it, comes from the old country so I thought I might have a go at that one.
Give my love to Ma and Pa and gramps and everyone and specially to you.
Night night
John boy

She accuses me of liking Morris dancing and then demonstrates an awareness of the rudiments of LHotP.
Seriously defective, I call that.

Fine Post stuff, all.
The Hand Maiden's Tale is especially crisp, like a...

...No...I've decided we've probably overdone that joke.
(Darn it. Hose him down, somebody...)

You see the Ben Inquisition?
But she ain't here, and Funderlik's gone

And time's frozen on the Front Page. Strange, strange days.

Pin *wistful and thoughtful*

She was an army brat so did lived overseas for most of her life and Morris dancing was not the top feature on a saturday night whereas LHOTP was peak viewing!...sad these third world countries. No(comma courtesy of Waz) hootoo is not the same, perhaps we all have to dedicate a little more time to RL aspirations. Off to read Ben's interview...didn't realise she was in the chair. Funderlik (another Waz comma)s demise is a literary pilfering on an heroic scale...not nice and extremely boring.
take care
boots

Hey, MT...
Must be getting wistful
Anyhow, here's my little homage to an inimitable style : A1900928
Pin
(yeah I know...why try imitate it, then?)