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

Hullo, I'm not entirely sure why I'm here and talking to you but I whooshed over from the thread of Rain's tummy troubles and then read your stuff. I like the way you write, it amuses me. Therefore I drop in to say hullo! how are you? What are you? and other deep questions.

Kat

Hello! How very nice of you to take the trouble to come and flatter me until I'm pinker than a My Little Pony convention. I'm stuck at home with an advanced case of moping - I think I have a cold, you see, and despite being a girl I do traditional full-blown male pathetic when not well.

What am I? Um. Well, I am a human female Londoner with no job and too many books. When I'm not making tea I pootle about online. This activity I explain to my nearest and dearest as 'job-hunting'. Huh.


I had a peep at your space. Oooh, dare I ask how the old GCSEs have gone?

1 A*
6 As
and 2Bs!

I'm really chuffed.
I think I'm ill too I threw up today and now I feel like the whole house smells of sick. Not very fun at all. However I have struggled from my deathbed to hoover the house, and have succeeded in doing downstairs. I also do full blown moping when ill so I'm sure we can prop each other up with our moaning

What books do you enjoy? I'm currently whistling through some Piers anthony books someone was kind enough to send me for free.

So anything you would just burn up without knowing about me?

Oh, jolly well done indeed! I am really impressed!

I'm sorry you are feeling ill. There's nothing more depressing than having to mop up after yourself. Tea and sympathy type thoughts.

I'm reading K.J Parker's Scavenger trilogy (confusing, but v. clever); a biography of John Cleese; 'No1 Ladies' Detective Agency' (detective stories set in Africa); a biography of Christopher Marlowe; 'The Christmas Mystery' by Jostein Gaardner and 'The Book of Prefaces' by Alasdair Gray. Yes, I know it's unnerving. It even unnerves me. But I read very very fast and can keep up to eight books on the go simultaneously without getting confused. I never learnt to read. I already could by the time I went to school, like Scout in 'To Kill a Mockingbird'. It's my one party-trick, only I know of no party that would be improved by my sitting in the corner and reading the latest Harry potter in three and a half hours.

Now you go back to bed and look after yourself. No one should hav eto hoover when feeling sick.

You know what? I did have to hoover in the end! Isn't that just typical? However I did get to spend the rest of the day in bed because mum got home and sent me to bed straight away.

I too could read before school. I could never understand the people who couldn't. The one time I ever stopped reading was when my teacher got cross with me for saying forehead "for'ed", if that makes sense. I was brought up to say it that way and then she yelled at me so I refused to read for her for about...3months?

Today is pretending to buy an instrument day. I'm looking on ebay for clarinets of saxaphones that I would like to buy, then imagining I have enough money to buy them.

I like that - pretending to buy an instrument day.

When I was a teeny person in primary school, my teacher was very sweet. She'd get everyone to open their 'Peter and Jane' books and each kid in turn would read a sentence. She saw pretty darn quick that I had read the entire book by the time they got round to me and I was simply melting with boredom, so she used to let me sit at the back of the class and read anything I fancied form the story shelf until reading time was over. Then one day we had a substitute teacher, who simply wouldn't let me go away and get on with it. I had to sit with all the others and help read 'Peter and Jane go to the Beach' (see, I was that traumatised I remember the book) and not be silly, as she was quite sure our teacher wouldn't let me get out of reading. My claim that I could read already she dismissed as me being silly. I was only six, of course I couldn't read. So, when everyone else had staggered through Peter and Jane and the violent excitement of buying a bucket and a Big Blue Ball, I read my sentence perfectly fluently and briskly. So she asked me who had taught me to read. My Mum, I said. Whereapon she sighed and told me I hadn't been taught in the right way and needed to pay attention.

Since when is there a right way and a wrong way to learn to read? If you can read, it's right, surely? When I read 'To Kill a Mockingbird' I was absolutely astonished that Scout had such a similar experience to my own. I think what she really meant was that a child several steps ahead of the rest of the class was a pain to deal with and she wished she didn't have to.

Oh sure! I had a similar time. There are a large number of us out there!

My friend's mum is called Jane and the mum's brother is called Peter. So it was Peter and Jane Barron when they were small.
I remember how some children's books were completely bizarre though! Once when I was six I read a book called Serendipity and by the end of it I still didn't know the meaning of the word! So when my dad came home I asked him what it meant and it was perfectly clear. I don't understand how a book managed to go on for 20 or so pages and not tell me the meaning!

I can see you were completely and utterly broken and traumatised by the experience!

My one A* was in English Literature! Yay!

What other amazing things can I tell you?

How's the tummy bug?

I'm having my Saturday completely spoilt by staying on the sofa in a crumpled heap while my Significant Other rings me up every ten minutes from the supermarket to ask convoluted questions about taramousalata and to complain that he doesn't want to complain about the fact they won't deliver to our area even though they said they would over the phone. He's a bit English-fuss-hating about this kind of thing. I'm very good at complaining. I used to go ballistic, but now I get extremely polite, extremely articulate, and more stubborn than a psychopathic mule. Works wonders. Even if you don't get what you want, you do get the Manager apologizing profusely and offering you vouchers.

I am trying to watch the athletics at the same time. Being allergic to sweat myself, I watch them with the awe and incredulity I think I might reserve for angels dancing on the head of a pin. Why? why would anyone want to? I'm hooked on bafflement.