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

OK, I'm a bit behind myself (is that better or worse than being beside yourself?), but I'm determined to make a bit of a blog of this, and I really wanted to say something about my Easter break, so I'll start there...


It's leaking from the banjo...

Basically, my family is what I tend to describe as "rather nomadic" - we live all over the place - and this Christmas I didn't get to see either of my brothers, as one had just bought a post office in Derbyshire (as you do!) and the other was expecting a baby (yes, I know, his wife was...). So my parents hatched the cunning plot of visiting them at Easter, and I hatched the even cunninger plot of jumping in their car while they weren't looking

First stop Derbyshire, and a delightfully sunny and relaxed couple of days with 3 children who I don't think I've ever seen all so mellow at the same time. Much daisy-chain making, scootering (and scooter-abandoning-to-be-carried-by-grown-ups), and that repetitive imaginative play that's so endearing until it becomes incompatible with a nice cup of and a sit down.

The only rather alarming downer was discovering that the smoke coming from the back of the car was in fact the last of the red steering fluid leaking from a corrupted banjo - why you need a small stringed instrument filled with red fluid to make your power steering go, I'm really not sure...

Having worked out an entire plan B, involving booking train tickets online, to go to York, come back, and be towed all the way home, we rang the garage and were told "Oh, it's fixed, did we not say? You can pick it up when you like..."

The best moment of the stay, though, has to be the 5 of us grown ups sitting around realising we'd left the Easter eggs in the B&B, racking our brains: "I'm sure there must be some chocolate here somewhere..." ... only after several minutes of which did my sister-in-law remember she'd just bought 4 whole cartons of chocolate bars from the cash'n'carry. I mean, y'know, you can't have Easter without chocolate, it's, like, tradition or something!


"That's nice for you, you like children."

That was my friend's wonderfully enthusiastic reaction when I told her my brother's baby had just been born; mine was more like "OOH! A baby! Goo-goo! Aaaah! " - no matter that it was not in any sense mine (I should be so lucky), not exactly the first baby I'd seen, and several hundred miles away anyway...

But luckily our next stop gave us the chance to catch up with this delightfully darling little creature - oh, and his parents too, I guess Apparently, someone told my brother before the birth: "You won't need a TV, or a computer, or anything any more; you'll just spend your whole time staring at the baby." Strange, but true - but then I seem to be a complete sucker for lickle kiddy-winks.

And besides, they are kind of magic aren't they? Babies, I mean. With their tiny little faces, and little hands, and improbably teeny-weeny finger nails...

There's also something rather strange about how much we all enjoyed the National Railway Museum - I mean, we're not exactly a bunch of trainspotters, and we didn't have an excited little boy with us (I don't think a 3-week-old counts), but anyway. Actually, York's a lovely place to be; must visit more often; and ogle the lickle babby


After all which - oh, and the Yorkshire Sculpture Park on the way back, also a lovely place, full of Andy Goldsworthys at the moment (artworks, that is, not clones ) - it was a bit of a shock having to turn up at work on the Poets with clients wishing I'd hurry up and get their release ready...