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

That may or may not have slid under the deadline by a few seconds. Let's pretend it did, eh?

[Amy P]

Put yourself in a different time zone and then the journal would arrive in plenty of time.

As for au pairs, I was listening to a programme that concentrated on their difficult situation - they're not considered to be employees. Some families seem to treat this as a right to abuse them . You're correct in your view that this is not how you'd want anyone to treat their own child. One example was of a girl with no previous experience (or training) in childcare being given immediate sole charge of a tiny (and seemingly crying) baby for 14 hours a day and who was then sacked and put on a plane back home with no forewarning.

How about during an introduction to the house in LA where she would be working as a nanny, the earthquake drill was explained to the young girl applying for the job. In the event of a natural disaster, don't forget to save the dog first, then the infant! Needless to say the job was declined!

Deb

What I mainly don't understand is why you wouldn't want to be giving five star treatment to people who are looking after your children. If ever there was a time to ensure your employees are satisfied...

Day 12

For the absolute life of me I cannot think of what I was going to write about today. There was something. In fact, there was something yesterday too. This is what happens when I decide that avoiding the rain and watching the Apprentice is preferable to going running.

Luckily, my MiL was watching the second installment of that awful TV soap opera movie tonight. I only caught the last five minutes, but from this I see that the unfortunate poor young woman continues unfortunate, and was just being released from prison. For a murder, or possibly a manslaughter, she didn't commit (my money is on the rich girl). Must have been particularly good behaviour as she did not appear to be that much older.

Our last view of her is being stood up by the father of her baby, and a flashback to him promising to stand by her.

You are very welcome.

[Amy P]

Do I detect a Soviet/Communist flavour to that soap? (Rich girl bad, poor girl good.....)

Deb

Maybe it's just the Cinderella meme more than anything consciously political.

Sadly, as far as I can work out, rich girl is not about to meet her karma, so I am not sure quite what it is going for. And with luck I have missed the end.

Day 13

Hungreeeeeeeee! As my daughter would say. I do not know where she puts it all, although what she really wants is salami when she says that.

I am doing the 5:2 diet. The 5:2 diet is very simple. On two non-consecutive days you eat 500 calories, otherwise known as sod all, and the other days you attempt to eat normally and not pig out in relief.

It is very simple, which is why I chose it, and also annoyingly effective, which is why I can't stop.

Well, that and the weekly zumba and (usually) bi weekly 5k runs. No, that isn't a stealth boast. That is an outright boast. I overtook someone the other day.

Unfortunately I hate it. The not eating, not the running, which is actually quite fun, or the zumba, which I adore (cossack dancing to techno music, what's not to like?).

36 hours without eating is, it turns out, quite a lot. I have not achieved a state of transcendental something or another, which an awful lot of people on the diet claim for their fasting days. I am just really really hungry all day.

I am considering training for a triathlon just so that I can have an excuse not to keep it up.

[Amy P]

Mphruble gomryb argambyll...sorry, shouldn't speak with my mouth full.

I was just saying you have my sympathy & admiration. I couldn't do it.

Deb

A friend of mine does a total fast one day a week. Loves it -- says he looks forward to it.

Weight was never a problem of mine, but my sympathies to those for whom it is. It seems to be a nested box of catch-22s.

Hmmm, when I mentioned doing a diet similar to that to my cardiologist she went ballistic. Apparently fasting type diets are bad for folk with heart disease and not recommended by any medic or dietician accordingly. Hence me scrabbling just now for new diet regime and menus etc.

I will let you into the secret guys. Humans are omnivores, they eat anything they find. As the centuries passed we didn't have to roam the plains, we just popped down the road to the supermarket. This is a good thing. BUT we are built to proccess what we need and store what is left. It really is simple. Forget diets, forget, scales, and just concentrate on this.

If you eat more than you burn you get bigger.

So, if you want to be smaller, burn more than you eat. Some people can eat very small amounts. Some people can't. That isn't a problem. It just means that the second set of people just need to burn more energy.

How you do it is your choice. And forget them scales. If the clothes you bought last year are too tight, you are going the wrong way. If they are getting embarrassingly loose, you are going the right way.

I have put on 8 lbs in the last three years and I have had to buy smaller jeans because my waist is slimmer. It ain't what you weigh, its what you fit.

And one last thing. Forget the pics of all those celebrity cuties. Trust me, they have been photoshopped to perfection. In reality they too have real stomachs and backsides, .......and spots.

So, how do you know so much about those celebrity cuties...

I have had an interesting life. But I am an Englishman and a gentleman, and we have rules about that sort of thing.

Well this is, in fact, the first ever time I have dieted, possibly excepting the time when I was 14 that I gave up biscuits for lent. This is more exercise than I am used to doing too. I blame it on the children, although turning 40 might also have had something to do with it.

Day 14 (ish)

Sorry, got distracted by the arrival of the first of my birthday books. It's a regency romance by Eloisa James. Regency romances are my guilty pleasure. This is entirely the fault of Georgette Heyer A757343 It's not just the romance, it's her world building. It's beautifully done. Also, her bit characters are fabulous.

Unfortunately, she was so good she spawned a whole cottage industry in knock offs, which despite the fact that are frequently pretty awful, somehow I cannot stop myself reading.

And then there is Eloisa James. Who really writes nothing like Heyer, thank god, but whose books are pretty damn good.

What I like about her is that she obviously writes quite a bit of her plots around random tidbits of history she has geekily researched far far more than was necessary for the casual mention they probably deserved.

A whole series, for example, was done around chess, and not just any chess, but chess as it was played in the 18th century. I suspect quite strongly that some of the games in the books actually took place, albeit with different players. Also, wigs, rubber bands and curiosity cabinets.

But really the reason I like her is that the first book of hers I picked up had a blurb which totally misidentified who the protagonists of the book actually were, and what the main story was. Clearly a mistake on the behalf of the blurb writer, but an understandable one because for pot boiler bodice rippers, her plots rarely go in quite the direction you expect.

She's been doing fairytale reconstructions lately, which i do not consider her best. I'd start with her Desperate Duchesses if I were you.