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

http://www.b3ta.com/questions/dumbthings/post110420

Because if it was, it's made my bloody Christmas.

How did you guess?

Yes, that's me.

B

Well the user name's the same as your old email address, and I know you're a cynical teacher, so I put two and two together and hoped it was four.

Besides, I have an eye for spotting hootooers on B3ta...

Bugger me. Didn't know you knew my old email address. Have we really known each other that long?

B

Got to be around four years by my reckoning. Possibly more.

What is even more worrying is that I now appear to be 'Answer Of The Week', as well, and therefore the most interesting thing posted on b3ta over the Christmas break.

Disturbing...

B

I would say congratulations, but given the title of that QotW...

THAT'S BRILLIANT.

Any shoplifting stories?

I pinched a packet of Lucozade Sport sweets once, but I fear that will not be very impressive.

I was going to write a little about my god-awful alarm clock for the Cheap Tat topic, but never got round to it.

B

Ah well. I had to do a crappy "not me but my mate" story for the shoplifting. Mainly because I've met some incredible thieves.

Can't do b3ta at work - so don't know what you're on about - but for a shoplifting story...

Went to a beer festival with a coach from a social club in Coventry, the four of us knew precisely 1 person on this coach, and he'd arranged the booking for us.

We turn out to be the only 4 English people on the coach, everyone else is Scottish - (and even I'm part Scottish)

After the beer festival it was traditional to go to town in Holland called Sloos (or similar) where everyone descended on the local porn emporiums, and other local places of interest.

These locals evidently didn't think much of their visitors, because they had security guards outside every shop, which made what I witnessed even more outstanding - whilst his friend knocked a small glass item off a shelf and noisily proclaimed it had been on the edge of the counter, and it wasn't his fault, he walked across to a model sailing ship, at least 3 feet long and whose central mast was a similar size, and walked out of the shop with it - nodding to the security guard as he walked out.

Never seen anything like it for sheer brass.

http://www.b3ta.com/questions/witness/post121195

There's a corresponding h2g2 journal from the time somewhere I think...

Ah. I see the £20 note moustache has made another re-appearance. Still brilliant.

And I wish I'd thought of the nickname 'Paster of Muppets' first.

B