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

As the more keen-eyed amongst you may know, I've volunteered myself for "The Stretcher" (A44319404) - h2g2's answer to Strictly X-Celebrity Brother Fame Lloyd-Webber Vehicle (On Ice!).

After checking my junk filter today (why send emails from h2g2 Aviators? Will there be multimedia tasks afoot?) I got my first challenge:

"You will be required to write an introduction to yourself..."

Piece of cake.

"...in just 26 words,..."

Not too difficult. Only twice as difficult as my 42 Word Story competition.

"...each starting with a different letter of the alphabet."

Oh dear. That makes things a bit difficult. Not only am I limited to one usage of the letter "A" (do I use it for "and"?), I have to find a way to use words beginning with "Q" and "X" in an introduction about myself.

Luckily I have a secret weapon - Laura bought me a copy of Foyle's Philavery, a collection of unusual words. That's got to turn up something helpful!

Q= quite, quietly, quick

X= xenophobic (hopegully preceded by "not"), xylophone,

I should point out I want to win said competition Egon - how many people will be blown away by my deft insertion of the word "quite"? As for anything requiring "not" as a prefix - that's needlessly frittering away my only "N"!

Trust me, I've filled three pages of my notebook since lunchtime trying out variations.

"Quick with a Xylophone" Who could resist that...

If I was describing you, I wouldn't use the A for 'and'.

B

Sorry. I couldn't help myself.

Oh, I saw that one coming a mile off.

Why use an Aviators email address?

Because it says 'h2g2' on it.
Because h2g2aviators aren't an organisation who are pro-censorship or anti-competition.
Because it makes as much sense as sending an email from googlemail, for example - that wouldn't mean you'd be searching the net, would it?


Oh, and incidentally, if you'd read the email properly you'd realise that this isn't the first challenge. This is just a little appetiser, something for us to gauge standards by, to finalise our list of contestants. Yours had better be good now - imagine the shame if you had to come here and confess that you'd fallen at the 'write an introduction about yourself' stage

Already got that post written and saved

Basically it blames you for everything.

Well, I've made my submission. Luckily my distaste for people who carve their names into trees turned up a (slightly tenuous) X word.

Oh, and Rich - I was thinking aloud about the Aviators thing, with fingers half crossed that there would be a multimedia aspect. It surprised me because I was expecting an email from the usual Post Team address.

I once wrote one of these for Greebo. Hang on...

B

Oh yes - forgot they were alphabetical at the time:

F87870?thread=199831

B

That's brilliant!

Multimedia aspect, eh? Hmmm...

Nah, I don't think we'd get away with that. Still, it's a half-idea worth filing away!

The reason the email didn't come from the Post Team address was that it isn't a Post competition, really. We host competitions like this and EotM without getting involved in their organisation. And we needed to have an email address that Pin and GB could check so the voting is as transparent as possible.

I suppose you can't give outsiders the key to the post towers!

There are no outsiders

But you're right. Can't trust anyone these days. I remember when you could leave your email account open and nobody would come in and wee on the address book.

Them were't days eh?

So how many contestants have you got so far?

Confidential, I'm afraid. Don't want to say we've got x and x-5 show up on the day, eh? What happened to the others? Lost in the dungeons?

Ask Pin. He'll probably tell you

Hmm, I think the last time I spoke to Pin he called me a "tawdry little whore". Which was nice. Lovely chap.

The odds of you winning have just lengthened somewhat