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

Must look at these sites occasionally!

Hello Chips,

Lovely to hear from you, really!

I hope you've been enjoying yourself and finding interesting things to do since we last spoke.

I must admit that I've not felt inclined to log-on very frequently of late!

My interest tends to be a little low at present in the stuff that is being posted. I must be feeling my age!

Still,I must carry on regardless and try to drum up some enthusiasm from somewhere!

But it is nice to hear from you as one of my earliest friends on h2g2.

Keep smiling,

Ron

And hello to you jaded Ron

I'm sure you'll regain your old zest and enthusiasm soon

This is such a wide and diverse site - something is bound to rekindle your interest.

I like to think so, Chips. I do hope you're right, and I shall find something to get me moving again.

Over the last few weeks I've been a little concerned that you, also, seem to be a little less enthusiastic about the site. The fact that your Personal Space has lost its sparkle; in fact doesn't seem to exist at all!

Something quite significant or unpleasant must have happened to you to prompt you to change your P. S. so radically!

But it is nice to hear from you. Do try, as I am trying, to be a little more positive about yourself and to see the good things about h2g2 and the BBC sites in general. I'll be around to talk to should you wish to discuss any interesting things you see or hear on your tour around the BBC sites.

Ron

Ah, there you are. Lost you for a while

My PS......what a lot of interest that's generated

Au contraire, Ron. (I don't want anyone flattering themselves that they had caused me any unrest)

Thank you for your kind offer, and rest assured that you will most definitely be the first person to whom I turn on my (unlikely) tour of the BBC sites

HO HO, now who's the smooth talker here!!!? Chips, where have you been? What happened? What's this all about?

I'm cleaning up my personal space and happened to come across this conversation. Or am I too nosey?

Hi Frontiersman, how's your good old self?

Why, Hello Krabatt!

More to the point, where have you been? You were conspicuous by your absence, in some respects at least! Dare I say you were missed, or is that too much?

No, you're not the least bit nosey; this is an all inclusive site. We should all expect or anticipate that what we post on h2g2 is likely to be read by anyone, including absolute 'outsiders'.

Chips is a little reserved at the moment. She is, I think, unlikely to tell either of us the reasons for her new, rather 'low-key', apparently self-imposed profile.

As for the smooth talk...mea culpa!

f.

Well, if you say so Frontiersman. If you say I was missed I can only hope it's in a positive meaning of the word. No seriously, I was reading this conversation and quite frankly I understood every word of it. Between you and me, it was a huge relief to cross the border from France to Flanders and to be able to patati and patata myself without restrictions and with full flair and to people who understood every word I said and and even laughed about my jokes. It really difficult to be humorous in a foreign language!
By the way, I missed some people as well. Silly isn't it? People who hardly know eachother, only by means of writing and sometimes bickering over the internet, can become attached to one and another. (I hope this is good English.) Who would have expected I would fraternize with an accountant, for instance? Eh! With chips it's easy, I love pommes de terres prepared in every culinary variety

Yes K. I do say so! And in the most positive of senses, I assure you.

You were missed; alright?

That is quite true, what you say about our h2g2 community of 'speech in writing'. We speak as strangers in the 'real' world, and as colleagues in the cyber one. Our relationship is an innocent and yet warm one, our words chosen with care and consideration, by and large.

Words have the most enormous power and potency. They make or break alliances between states and individuals; they destroy people's peace of mind or pacify them and make them happy, even ecstatic! They make us cry bitterly or laugh out loud in great joy; they have sent millions to the gas chambers of Auswitz, saved millions from the disasters of our pained planet in the environmental horrors of recent and former times.

Everyone should treat words with the greatest respect, without flippancy and with conscious thought as to their permanent effect on the people to whom they are addressed.

The words of Hitler almost put us under the jackboot. Those of Churchill pulled us from under them just in time.

I love words. I do prattle on, so please indulge an oldie's odd ways!

With my kind regards.
Speak to you soon!

Ron

Yes, I know I make silly remarks. As a matter of fact I worked for accountants and enjoyed doing so. Accountancy as far as I could see is quite interesting.

I was wondering about the title of this entry in your diary: Membership of 'Collective' and 'WW2' established. What does that mean? And at which sites do you have to look occassionally?

WW2 had a deep impact on the Netherlands. Even up to this day the Dutch are wrestling with their past, collectively and personally. Collectively because the role of the queen and government during the first days of the Germans attacked Holland wasn't a very heroic one and it did very little to inspire bravery in the people the next four year of occupation. A huge percentage, something like 79 percent of the Dutch jews were deported from Holland and died in concentration camps in Eastern Europe. The Dutch can still be very touchy about it, nowadays.
I am deeply greatful and acknowledge the effort by the English, the Canadian, the American, the Indian and African (Kosh her grandparents) and all the other soldiers of the other nations who came to fight fascism on European soil. In Northern France and the south of Belgium there are many Brittish cimetaries from WOI and WOII and it's a sad sight to see all those white stones neatly arranged in row after row lying there in complete tranquillity next to a busy road full of vehicles zooming by and a few visitors wandering around. Tiny figures between the rows of stones lost in the vastness of the space.

We really have to be careful. Fascism is of all times, says Umberto Eco in his latest book and I agree.

Oh! Krabatt, it wasn't my intention to 'lecture' you about any of your remarks, but I see now, looking back at what I have written, how it must appear to you as such! So, I'm hoist on my own petard!
No, it was more of a 'thinking aloud' on my part. I'm so sorry that it came across to you almost as a 'rebuke'.

There was absolutely nothing in anything you said that could give offence. And I was merely trying (too hard it appears) to be 'interesting' in my remarks about the wondrous power that words wield in the world.

I take it that you know about the other two BBC sites called 'Collective' and 'WW2'. The first is a kind of Magazine about anything and everything one can imagine. It is a conversation forum of current interests and affairs of all kinds. The other is dedicated to stories of real life events and experiences during the Second World War, many written from personal experiences during the fighting and/or on the 'home front' I registered with these sites earlier this year, but haven't made any personal contributions to either of them to date.

Holland and France, both, were merely overwhelmed by the sheer military power of Nazi Germany. So was Britain. The evacuation of our troops from the beaches of Dunkirk, Churchill himself remarked, 'must not be seen as a victory by us at home'. We would have been in precisely the same captive position as Holland and France, but for that blessed stretch of water, the 22 miles of the Channel 'moat'. But the rescuing of the British Expeditionary Force in 1940 saved thousands of troops to join the Allied Invasion Forces of 1944, which enabled all on the Continent to resist and eventually prevail in that noble struggle for freedom from tyranny
The French, at the time of the evacuation from Dunkirk of our tired and increasingly entrapped troops, blamed the British Expeditionary Force for abandoning the Continent to the Nazis. They saw it as a betrayal of loyalty.
The War Cabinet also had to do things that went painfully against its own precious principles. The Royal Navy was ordered to destroy the entire French fleet, then based in the Mediterranian, to prevent it falling into Nazi hands.



Ron

No offence taken, I merely seized the opportunity to show off my self knowledge.
This summer I walked from the most northern seaside resort Bray des Dunes over the beach towards Dunkirk past big chuncks of concrete lying abandoned in the sun, bunkers in ruines. In Leffrinckoucke north of Dunkirk there is a so-called 'national mortuarium' just at the entrance from the city towards the huge and blonde dunes of Flanders. The mortuary lies next to a football field. On the other side is a big old military fortress. The area beneath the fortress is now used by a rifle club for shooting practice.
Placards placed around the 'national mortuarium' in Leffrinckoucke tell the story of the chaos in 1940 the French army was in. They show black and white photographs as well. I remember one on which you can see many tired and hungry looking French soldiers waiting on a quai to be evacuated.
I'll have a look at those sites.