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

Yes,the decline of bookshops is a great pity.

[Amy P]

So sad about the bookshop closure. You'd at least think that you could get a coffee and a book in the same place.

Yeah... My local waterstones has a cafe as well, and there is something extra good about browsing books in a room scented with the fragrance of coffee, then drinking coffee in a room scented with the fragrance of books

Still annoyed about the closure of Waterstones in Eastleigh. It was in the Swan Centre, which already has at least 2 cafes, not to mention a variety of restaurants, pubs and even a McDonalds (although I'm not sure whether that qualifies as food?) I liked that Waterstones, I've bought books in that Waterstones and the contents of the shelves were good friends. It was the only new bookshop in town and now it's being replaced by a café which will no doubt sell cups of tea for more than the cost of an actual new paperback book.

I still regret Border's closure. Borders in Southampton had books, DVDs and CDs as well as a cafe. It was perfectly positioned halfway between where I work and where Peregrin worked, the railway station, and the Isle of Wight ferry terminal, and it had a large carpark for our car-owning friends. It was the perfect spot to meet after work. If one of us (ie Peregrin, who always was) was running a little late, it didn't matter as I could enjoy a good browse for hours.

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Yeah - Borders was the best... Apart from that its cafe was starbucks, and I really didn't like their coffee, Borders was just supremely well laid out, with sections for exactly the things I was interested in - I could spend hours in there too browsing CDs, manga books, stationery, games...

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There are occasionally good things to come out of being off. On Friday, my son was asked to read out a firework poem he had written in assembly, and us the parents were invited to attend (every week a couple of children from each class who have done really well at something are invited to share their work with the rest of the school). Sadly I'm not normally able to attend, but this time I was.

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Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday dear darling
Happy birthday to you

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After yesterday's excitment, today I woke up to discover chocolate crumbs all over the floor in the kitchen next to the birthday cake, a perfect finger-sized indentation embedded in the top of the cake as well as chocolatey fingerprints . My son, who was in the kitchen at the time, said that the crumbs must have fallen out of the cake. Hmmm....

In other news, the washing machine's broken again. Wasn't even a week.

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I bet it was a good

Worth getting up before 6am for, obviously

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At least he didn't try to kid you that you'd imagined the cake's existence, by eating the entire thing before you were up.

Sorry to hear about the washing machine, here's hoping that it's a cheap repair job.

The washing machine's the one gadget in the house we have a warranty on, because it does tend to break down every couple of months. They claim it's because we're in a hard water area.

Really? Yes, we're close to the South Downs and our water is chalk-filtered, but that's not much of an excuse. Between them, the South Downs and North Downs cover most of the southeast of England, the region that, outside London, has the highest population density in the UK - and this isn't even the only hard water area in the UK. Are Hotpoint (other washing machine manufacturers are available) really saying that they are incapable of making a reliable washing machine for people in these areas?

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FWIW the washing machine here is a Hotpoint, this is a very hard water area, I use a water softenng tablet or equivalent in every wash, and breakdowns have averaged out to once every 4 years.

I once heard that Bournemouth is one of the UK's few soft water areas, and it makes washing difficult, as the water can't rinse out the soap very easily.

Is this true?

[Amy P]

Your children are brilliant!

My understanding of hard and soft water is that hard water just stops the soap from lathering, so items don't get cleaned, whereas in soft water, soap makes a good lather, so that needs to be rinsed out.

I expect these days cleansing products aren't just made of soap, so they should work with hard and soft water, but I live in a soft water area, so I don't know much about descaling etc, but my washing machine rinses well enough.

Our house in France has the hardest water I've ever come across. Not only does the kettle fill up with scale but, if you wash spoons and don't dry them, you get a line round the bowls. I hate to thnk what the inside of the washing machine is like. Obviously we don't use it that much but it hasn't broken down yet, and it's a Beko!