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

Frank

At the end of May I shall be going on my annual holiday, for a week. I am going all the way to the Isle of Man (about an hour by plane). I don't know if I told you that my son and his wife live there and my sole annual holiday is a week with them.
They are both nurses at the main hospital there, he is a paediatric nurse and his wife works with adults.
He was not very good at school although he was complimented for a good imagination. When he left school he became a lab technician with the local Co-op, testing milk, a job he disliked. Then eventually he worked in the local car factory ending up as a night-shift foreman. He took voluntary redundancy when things were not going well with the company and after a couple of temporary jobs, one being as a postman and another as milkroundsman, he went to the local FE college to take an Access course then went to Oxford Brookes University
(formerly a Polytechnic) to take a four-year nursing course. He did very well and got a good Honours degree (a Second-class Honours, First Division). His first and only nursing job has been in the Isle of Man. But after ten years I think he's getting a bit fed up with it. I'll get the latest news when I seen him.

Harold

Harold,
Enjoy your annual outing, I hope all goes well. It is never to late to go back to school is it. I read a story in the paper today about a grand old lady of 101 years of age.Alice Sommer Herz who was in the Theresienstadt village where they took the red cross inspectors to show them how good the Germans were to the Jews.
It was a film set all facade and no content. It was still a slave camp, they still starved and every now and then it was cleared out to the gas chambers.
She was a pianist and now lives in North London. She played for the inmates and the Germans saving herself and her son. She says music fed her and she made it through. At the end it says she is still attending classes for philosophy so it really is never too late is it.

Harold,
You should have heard the language at that point as the letter disapeared and came up as a print. The touch screens on these laptops are way too sensitive I think I will buy a plug in mouse and tame it with a whip and chair.
It is a wonderful machine and I have been all over the world with it, the result is I get mail from people I know saying I am neglecting them. It is just my mail list is now so long I could spend 25 out of every 24 hours answering it.
I have been to every part of these Isles but never set foot on the Isle of Man, I think it is something I should do before falling of my perch. It must be that emblem of theirs reminds me of something else not so pleasant, either that or my allergy to cats tailess or not. My little dog would love it he gets all his exercise chasing cats.
I have been told that those of us who did the film interview will be on the screen only if you have digital TV with that magic red button. It is shown on BBC1-2-4 from May 3rd until May 8th as a loop, press said button and go to Peoples war where it will be under the heading VE day celebrations. It may be on in June as well during the official end of the war celebrations. Some one in their wisdom decided VE and VJ day should be one and the same mid way between, I bet the old Vets will love that.
Well I got that bit written without it vanishing into the blue, I just keep my hands away from the touch screen, with my pianist fingers I can never resist that little twinkle when my fingers touch down and all hell breaks loose on this thing as a result. write one hundred times dont twinkle. Oh well it all adds to the fun.
Regards Frank.

Frank

Back from my jaunt to the Isle of Man. A pleasant enough week although there was a bit of rain at the beginning. I just missed the TT races but I did notice the protective stuff going up on the roads - very thick padding on lamp-posts, on buildings on corners of roads etc. The hospital is geared up for casualties, I understand. I met a former student of mine who owns a small hotel on the island - a bit of a run-down place I thought. Last year we met and he took me to a posh hotel and we had, on him, a good three-course meal, with wine. This year he took me to a beach cafe and he had a sandwich and I had a small lasagne. A bit of a come-down.
My son had acquired a new PC, his earlier one having collapsed. This one came with a printer so he gave me his old printer. Fortunately it fitted in my suitcase.
He has prepared a bibliography of my writings which includes any mentions of me in publications, my unpublished lecture notes, abortive essays, letters to newspapers, etc. It begins, I think, with my joint editorship of the school magazine in 1941-2. So that it's not surprising that over 60 years of stuff come to over 40 pages of his list.

Harold

Welome Back Harold,
I would not have missed the TT having once owned a TT bike raced on the Island. A New Imperial 150cc I rebuilt from a box of bits aged about 14, I think Dad was counting on some months before anything happened, I fired it up one Sunday morning a couple of weeks later without a silencer. Neighbours came running out thinking a plane had crashed.
I got to ride it around the leafy lanes, it was war time no traffic and I could ride to Uncle Arthurs farm on it with the aid of some petrol syphoned from Dads trucks. The local Bobby told me if he saw me riding the bike he would run me in. When he saw me coming he turned his back and therefore could not see me, a wartime Solomon.
Bit of a law breaking family we were. Mum would drive to work at Goosepool (Teesside Airport now)in the Austin Chummy with petrol I syphoned from the trucks, we never told dad. She had no licence and the only driving lessons nearly ended in divorce. She got caught at it and let off with a bribe of bacon and dad pulling the distributer and hiding it.
I once ran her into Goosepool where she worked, on the back of my bike and ran out of petrol on the way back. Pushing it for three miles cured me of taking her to work but she loved motor bikes. I would collect her to baby sit for us on my by then big bike and she was well into her sixty's.
I can understand how your writings have built up, I have only been writing for about ten years starting on an old electric typewriter and working through computers various to my wonderful laptop. I have shelves of stuff also local and national Papers with articles letters and pieces I have written and been published. They are on to me yet again to write up more local stories for them. What with London TV crews, Local Radio and the Papers it is getting to be more like frank mee's war, there must be a lot of people out there with fresh stories to write.
I do in time manage to put them into folders with pictures and explanation for the chidrens future perusal.
I was a bit down this week three more good friends one an ex girl friend dropped off the perch, you begin to feel very lonely Harold especially at a family party on Friday gone where they came from all over the British Isles to an 80th, I was surrounded by widows and that brought it home to me.
Oh well as we said in wartime "Life goes on" we just get on with things.
Keep writing Harold and look after yourself, Regards, Frank.