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

Morning JYY

Certainly gardening weather yesterday, and warm & sunny this morning in Suffolk too.

Plum blossom has now fallen, but there's plenty of apple blossom opening, and I see the flower buds are starting to form on the sage bush - when those flowers open, the bumblebees go berserk for them, and the thyme flowers too.

Yesterday I dug out a small patch of lawn in a sheltered southwest-facing corner, ready for my rapidly growing chili plants.

Today, I guess I'll have to put on the industrial-strength gardening gloves & rearrange all the tangled blackberry branches.

Have a great day.



P.S. Maconie is on the 10.30pm slot for a whole two weeks - poor old Scott...

Hi Rich Dee !

Scott's still alive then ? Have not heard a peep from him, although Dr Who was saying what a fabulous guy SC is. Really.....

I hope to plant my sweet pea seeds this year. This is despite the fact that the sell by date on the packet says 2003. Will they be all right I ask myself ? Will let you know.

Today out walking and the woods were full of bluebells. What a wondrous site, truly a carpet of blue. And of course they have a perfume don't they ?
Are chilli plants easy to grow ? Last year I grew tomatoes. Not that they came to much, but I made 5 jars of green chutney from them and I am still so proud of myself.

I have not had the time to read much lately, and must confess that I am still half way through the same James Patterson (I know you don't rate him !) and Stephen King as I was last month. The Gerald Seymour is untouched and I have already renewed the books once and paid a small fine of 30 pence.
I think I need to go on holiday somewhere hot where I can just do nothing but read.

Hope you are well. Apologies for not replying sooner.

Doing anything this week end ?

Jen

Hi Jen

I bought two packets of pepper seeds in early March and already, on the window-sill, three of the shoots are about three inches tall. Maybe something to do with a little mystery ingredient called 'Baby Bio'! Much more impressive than my pots of usually-reliable basil shoots this year. But you can't eat pepper leaves, of course, so I'll have to see how many flowers they produce...

Seen any lilac trees in blossom yet? Fortunately I didn't kill off our two trees in the garden (one lilac & one white) when I pruned them aggressively two winters ago. No blossom last spring but it is back again now. Also, holly bush is full of tiny green blobs, so maybe a lot more berries this winter?

Haven't seen anything of Scott myself but it seems he keeps in touch with Nick Birse by e-mail. According to Nick, SC has been e-mailing Lesley Douglas! One can only imagine...

Nothing much planned for this weekend. My Aylesbury sister is unlikely to visit as she has two A-level revising teenagers (actually one of them is 20) to take care of.

Probably listen to Rock's Greatest Opening Line on Monday lunchtime, and also hope that Bob Harris is doing another of his Drivetime request shows.

Maybe talk to you at the weekend - library closed on Monday of course!

Afternoon !

My lilac tree is in bloom, and the blossom is white. The tree grew from a seed dropped by a bird so it's extra special.

The forsythia came to nothing. No doubt it was being strangled underground by all the bramble we have.

Today it is mainly raining and the sky is grey. I do hope it improves for at least one day over the week-end. I honestly thought summer had arrived last week. Oh, maybe it did !
I've not taken a great interest in the greatest opening lines. I don't like Sting so the only interest I had was that he wasn't going to be the winner. I must admit, I think the whole thing has been really dragged out. I wouldn't say that on JV board as I might get a verbal bashing !

No news, have a lovely week-end, speak soon,

Jen

Hi Jen, great to hear from you again

I haven't been so badly affected by the Greatest Opening Lines comp as I don't listen to JV every day, though I have been voting for 'Werewolves' on the R2 website. My own personal must-not-win-at-all-costs is Paul Simon - tired of hearing him on Wogan at 7.31am practically every day, and his songs seem too self-consciously clever for me, though I did enjoy Graceland.

More chili pepper info to give you. The varieties I bought were called Hot & Spicy (mixed chilis) and Californian Wonder (mixed bell peppers). Planted the first few H&S on March 4th in a pot on the windowsill - 3 of the 7 seeds germinated and the largest shoot is now 4" tall. Unfortunately (#1): the packet says 18" between each plant, whereas mine are more like 10mm! Unfortunately (#2): packet says Grow in pots BETWEEN March & April, so the seeds I potted yesterday might be too late.

I'm now 120 pages into 'The Face'. Shockingly it's the first Dean Koontz novel I've read. Fascinating characters, though DK breaks an important writing rule because three of the major characters (including the TITLE character!) are only referred to anecdotally at the moment. I thought the famous Creative Writing Rule was 'SHOW, don't Tell' when it comes to introducing characters and important events into a novel.

Koontz's writing style is less polished than King's, more cluttered, especially in some of the short but over-elaborate descriptions. Bonus points if DK can tie all the plot strands together by page 690.

Have to finish this message as time running out on login session!

Morning Rich D !

Yesterday I popped into the library and yes, renewed my books again. I have read a couple of Dean Koontz novels, but the last was about 4 years ago and I can't remember the titles. I have just nipped downstairs to see if I still have them, but I haven't.
I had 100s and 100s of books, but I had an enourmous clear out one day and took sacks of them to one of the local charity shops. Other than buying bargain offers at Smiths, I mostly buy my books from the charity shops. Unfortunately, I have been really lax with my reading. I used to be a proper book worm........

It's a dark day here. The BBC weather page tells me I am in for sun with light showers. It's only 9.19 am so still time. Did you see the eclipse of the sun last night ? It was far too cloudy here, and although the weather man said on the local news to keep looking, we saw nothing at all.

I sowed 2500 mixed seeds on Sunday. Well, scattered them ad hoc on a wing and a prayer really. One of my packets had passed its sell by date and the other said I should have planted out in March/April. So we'll see.

Your pepper plants came up trumps last year didn't they ? So you'll be fine again I'm sure.
Everything but everything has a sell by date these days. Can you remember the 'good old days' when nobody know or cared the last day when you supposedly couldn't eat, drink or sow etc.

Enjoy the rest of your day,

Jen

Hi Jen

Saw the tail end of the lunar eclipse last night - funny weather really, it rained stair-rods until 4pm yesterday, then sunny at 5pm, then cloudy at 8pm, and finally a break in the clouds at 10.45pm! Actually, I was watching CSI and Law & Order most of the time, so wasn't too bothered about missing the eclipse - lunar eclipses are a lot more common than solar eclipses.

Sorry if I misled you - the pepper plants are a new addition THIS year, I've never grown them before.

Did you see the first episode of Stephen King's "Kingdom Hospital" on BBC3 last Sunday? Bit of a dog's dinner in my opinion. It really needed a clearly-defined central mystery from the very first scene (something along the lines of: "Who killed Laura Palmer?" etc). Also the characterisation was all over the place, I couldn't figure out if Andrew McCarthy's character was meant to be a daring maverick or merely incompetent. Good music though - The Gourds' country version of a Snoop Dogg rap song during the car parking scene, and I'm trying to find out the title & artist of the 'red dragon tattoo' song which was playing during the painter's car accident (which was pretty much exactly the same as Stephen King's real life hit-&-run, of course...

Weather sunny but freezing - have to plant the runner beans sometime though!

Aha! That's why I enjoyed that song...

'Red Dragon Tattoo' was recorded by my current favourites, Fountains of Wayne, on their 2nd CD 'Utopia Parkway'. Wonder if Stephen King was really listening to that song when he was hit by the truck? And I wonder if I'll bother watching part 2 of "Kingdom Hospital"?

Hi JYY

Sunday morning - what a lazy bunch they are on the R2 boards. It's 10.30 and already I've had breakfast, done my washing, sowed three rows of spinach and walked down to the library!

Cloudy but dry at the moment. You?

Afternoon Rich Dee !

I meant to watch 'Kingdom Hospital' but this week and last I went down to one of the local pubs.

Last week 2 Latvian girls had just started working behind the bar. The licencee said he had just picked them up from the bus station that day - all above board of course. This week there were another 2 Latvians who are to work in the restaurant. Tall, slim and blonde. Like moths to a flame the blokes were there in full force ! The girls are all very sweet and their English is fine. Unfortunately they've not got to grips with the pounds and pence, so are relying on customers to count out their own change.!

Will reply to your second e mail now !

Jen

Monday afternoon part 2. Played badminto this morning and had a good laugh with all the other regulars.
Then sat out and ate lunch with yoghurt and honey for afters. Oh pure nectar !

The sun is shining here in Somerset, but a friend has e mailed to say that thundery showers are forcast later this afternoon.

The boards seem very quiet don't they. Has their been some street fighting over there with accusations flying all over the place about who is or isn't SC ? I just cannot get interested in all of that.

None of my seeds are showing. I planted 2 sunflowers which I bought a a kerb side plant sale, and they have not yet died on me. Also have a fuschia and some anonymous thing to plant. Hopefully I will get round to it today - if it doesn't rain.

Speak soon,

Jen (Lazy today !!)

Hi Jen

Tall blonde Latvians, eh? Mmmmmm.... Those Eastern European countries sure know how to turn them out! I share my birthday with the lovely 5' 10" Czech model Karolina Kurkova who was part of Blair's 'Welcome to the EU' party a few weeks ago.

Last year, my oldest sister & brother-in-law went on a Baltic cruise to St.Petersburg, & bro-in-law said he has never seen so many gorgeous women as he saw walking round the Hermitage that day.

On the seed front - tallest chili plant is now 7" after 2 months & 1 week of growth from seed. No sign of the pumpkin shoots yet. Have to sow a couple more pots this week.

Haven't looked at the MBs yet this morning. No doubt I must prepare myself for Thrill City....

Rich

Hi Rich,

Here I am, better late than never. I am very impressed with your 7" chilli.
With the Latvian girls, I think it did help that part of the attraction was that they were all on the right side of 25 - probably 21. The landlord was doing a roaring trade last Sunday.
The girls were also handing round free vodka and knocking it back like water.
Pruned my forsythia to 12" this afternoon. Have I made a mistake ?

Seeds are coming up, I reckon all 2500 of them in the one clump. I'll never make a good gardener, but I love to be outside messing about don't you.

Love

Jen

Hi Jen

Not so good on the "flowers" side of gardening, unless you're talking flowering herbs. The sage is about to explode with blossom so the bees will be going berserk around that plant. Meanwhile, quite a few strawberry flowers out, and no frost to scupper them!

Had a very pleasant surprise yesterday afternoon - walked down to my local video rental shop (30 seconds across the road from the library) and discovered that it was shut down & completely empty... with a big sign on the door saying: "We have now moved to a brand spanking new purpose-built superstore, five minutes' walk across the other side of town"! I was wondering how the relatively cramped old shop would cope with the large quantities of DVDs released every Monday, particularly with 50 copies of LOTR 3 to display soon...

Rented 'Freaky Friday' DVD last night - pretty funny film, Jamie Lee Curtis threw herself into the teen role, and the soundtrack was fab of course, featuring Johnnie Walker's favourite Joey Ramone song for the scene with Jamie Lee on the motorbike. Bonus Features on the DVD were a bit of a rip-off: a few music videos, 7 minute behind-the-scenes docu, 1 minute blooper reel and 10 second deleted scene. No director's & actors' commentary. So, DVD worth renting but not worth buying.

Have a great weekend. Anything planned?

2nd thread here.

Went to Torquay for the weekend and it was scorching. I had taken boots,jumpers and at least 5 pairs of trousers, so had to go to Debenhams and buy something summery.

Highlight of the weekend was a 35mins each way trip to Brixham on the ferry. Do you know, it was just like being abroad !

We only have a poxy little video shop - nothing like Blockbusters or whatever it's called. The last DVD I watched was 'Gladiators' and I thought it was brilliant.

Jen