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

[Amy P]

Sho might join you here in a rant about blurbs. I usually skip them (at least on Amazon) and go straight to what the readers have written. Although if you delve far enough into the reviews, you're going to go full circle and have everything from 0 stars to 5 stars. Looking for inspiration last night, for example, I went through the Kindle bestseller list on amazon.co.uk. Gone Girl really polarised the reviewers. So - do I read it or not?

Regency romance, to get back to the subject, is a great guilty pleasure, and I think you may have helped me decide what to read next...

Deb

Hey TC! Glad to find another aficionado!

Day 15

OK, so I am about to say something controversial. I will understand if, afterwards, y'all feel like you have to unfriend me.

I quite enjoyed this last series of Doctor Who.

Yes, I know, I am sorry. I hope in time you will forgive me, but there, off you go, have a good life!

Spoliers will now follow, so that may get rid of any lingerers...




Still here?




Sure?




OK then.

So, I stopped watching Doctor Who sometime early in David Tennant's tenure,and picked it up again for the last half season of Matt Smith.

I found the Matt Smith series heavy going. It all seemed to have got terribly self referential, and was, in fact, almost incomprehensible in places.

And the flirting really got on my nerves.

But this season, after the terribly self referential first episode, was, on balance, actively watchable.

It might be that I have now finally watched enough episodes to have caught up. But I think a lot of this has to do with Peter Capaldi, his angry eyebrows and his total lack of people skills. He is quite magnificent. God save us from a Doctor who is all twinkly and wise, is what I say.

But I also went for for Jenna Coleman more this season too. Can't say I actually liked her character, but I did think that her pathological thrill seeking drive for adventure was a sensible sort of characteristic for a companion. I'm afraid I rather enjoyed the whole Mr Pink thing too. Especially the end of that. I cried.

I do like a bit of angst.

I enjoyed the horror. I thought that was quite well done this series too. One should need to hide behind the sofa a lot. Himself needed reassurance on any number of occasions this season, and I was quite glad I didn't let him watch Listen at all.

Plus, I do enjoy a bit of steampunk and urban fantasy.

And I loved the scene setting. They did a very good job of finding intriguing scenarios to which I really wanted to find out what was going on and how they would save the day.

For a good half hour of every episode, therefore I was enthralled.

However.

Some of the actual explanations were a bit iffy, in my opinion. When you have people like humanities graduate me going, sorry, what? Surely that doesn't make sense, you must be in trouble.

For the sake of my own sanity, I have decided that the programme makers have clearly decided that in a universe where the Doctor keeps turning up with a British accent and a special love for the green and sceptred aisles and still flies around in a blue box, bothering about logical verisimilitude in physics is really a lost cause, and they have deliberately decided to flaunt this.

Plus, nominally, the programme is for kids. I'm not sure they care. And in fact the problem wasn't so much the bonkers science as there number of times times when my son simply didn't understand what was happening at all because they rammed the explanations into a busy five minutes 35 minutes in and he couldn't keep up.

Still, I forgave them anything when they found a new take on the zombie apocalypse. That REALLY made me laugh.

I would quite like some new big bads though. I am no longer scared by cybermen, more resigned to their inevitable appearance, and that's kind of a shame.

But, and this will clearly lose whatever is left of my audience, I am afraid I did cackle happily at the Master's new identity.

What say you that this is softening us all up for a Mrs Doctor next up?

The green and sceptred *isles*. Not *aisles*. I'm sire there's a very funny joke in that.

[Amy P]

I measure my midriff with a tape measure every morning. If the reading is too high, I resolve to eat a bit less that day. This way, things don't have time to get out of hand. If I unexpectedly find myself in a situation where I have to eat more of something starchy than I had planned o*n, I cut back on something starchy later in the day.



*A family gathering where some dear relative will be insulted if I don't try her favorite recipe, or a restaurant meal where you can't get cole slaw with your burger -- it *has* to be accompanied by lethal French fried potatoes.

As a kid, I always watched Doctor Who, but, obviously, I can't where I am now. William Hartnell was my Doctor. I have a box set of the David Tennants, and Sho recorded all the Christopher Eccleston series and sent it to me. I caught some of Matt Smith when I was over, and haven't seen Peter Capaldi at all yet.

But somehow, I understood exactly what all that was about.

Except that it never scared me. If things get scary I just look at it as a TV programme being filmed in a studio. I noticed my kids doing that at a very young age - my eldest asking me as early as 6 years old "How do they do that, Mummy?" when watching something that had been made by some camera trickery.

I'm still undecided about Peter Capaldi. I have to admit, though, that I adored Matt Smith.

I totally agree about the cybermen, enough already, it's time they were sent somewhere they can never come back from no matter what, and the daleks should be sent with them.

Deb

What Sol said. And Peter Capaldi is just brilliant!

Day 16

Today we made pizza from scratch and blancmange from a packet. I haven't had blancmange in years. It's no better than jelly at coming out of our rabbit shaped mold intact (what *am* I doing wrong?), but my son ate two large bowls full of it, so I am guessing that didn't matter.

My kids don't really like pizza, which is fine because really it is just glorified cheese on toast when you make it at home and I always hated cheese on toast, but they do like assembling them. The ones they made for me and B had two types of cheese, tomatoes, tomato sauce, mushrooms, ham, bacon, peppers, and chilli peppers on. Theirs was basically cheese, ham and tomato.

The new oven continues to cook much faster and better than the old one did.

Didn't I do a pizza post to JoPo last year? never did try the caviar topping.

I've read somewhere that if you dip the mold in warm water for a few seconds before turning it over, the jelly comes out better. I could be misremembering, though...

*Googles*

Yep! http://www.ehow.com/how_2123426_remove-jello-from-mold.html

That was my first thought too.

Mm pizza . Although I prefer mine with garlic sauce rather than tomato sauce. And lots of mushroom and onion. And a little bit of chilli beef. And some extra cheese It's not something I eat these days (doesn't really fit in with the diet, even the fab keep yourself satisfied one I'm on!) but I do miss it sometimes.

Deb

if you can manage it, line the mould with cling film, keeping it as smooth as possible. Smooth it out even more by filling it with warm water. Brush the mould lightly with oil first, so that the cling film sticks, and then comes away when you turn it out.

Empty the warm water out carefully, then pour in the runny blancmange/jelly/ice cream mixture.

That's the theory - I've never got it to work properly myself. Mainly because I can't get the cling film smooth.

One reason for wanting to travel to other planets would be so you could taste the pizzas there.

Well the cling film solution has gotta be better than the undefined lump of splodge. Thanks, TC, shall try it. And the cold water of that doesn't work.

Day 17

Today I started overhauling my CV, mucked about with cover letters a bit, and started making a list of places to send it all to.

The good thing about this round of job hunting is that it will, hopefully, involve fewer thrice dammed application forms.

We have decided to move back to Moscow. Oddly enough, the thing that stresses me most about this is not finding work, or even finding cheese, but what in gods name I am going to do about the fact that I pulled the fire resistant tags off the sofas, which means I cannot just leave them for the renters.

I've just had a Madeleine moment about the rabbit jelly mould! I'd forgotten all about that but it used to be a regular fixture at parties when we were kids. I always felt a bit sad when the poor rabbit's head got scooped off with a spoon into somebody's bowl.

[Amy P]

Are you moving back to Moscow because one of you has lined up a job there?

Nope. We are moving to Moscow for the sheer unadulterated hell of it. And some other reasons. I am quite looking forward to it.

Day 18

Herself and I have developed a ritual of popping into a coffee shop to kill time between when we get off the train and the beginning of her Russian lesson.

I always have a flat white, which I realise is deeply affected, but I am afraid I do actually prefer it, and she has a chocolate babychinno.

It is possible that one of the reasons why we are leaving London is because of just how much of a tit I feel asking for a babychinno, chocolate or otherwise.

Herself likes to drink her hot milk slightly flavoured with chocolate through a straw. She also likes it when they do the chocolate sprinkles on the top in a shape. Right now it is a Christmas tree. She needs to inspect my drink to make sure they have done the little leaf pattern thing with the milk. Which they always have.

When we have finished, she carefully packs up everything, the straws, the stirrers, the paper towels and so on, in the disposable cups I order because I think they are less easy to spill than the ceramic ones, and because I think they keep the coffee hotter for longer, and takes great pleasure in putting them in the bin.

Lately we have been accomplishing all of this without Herself getting covered in brown liquid, which is excellent as the damn stuff does not come out gracefully from Herself's white airtex school shirts. Plus, it's embarrassing to take your child *into* school looking scruffy, but not quite as embarrassing as taking a slightly soiled child anywhere near a group of Russians.

The rest of our time is spent by Herself cheering up the few people sitting typing on their laptops. She's not quite as shameless about charming random strangers as Himself is, but it is a close run thing.

Anyway. I quite enjoy our little interlude.

Especially now they have the Christmas drinks in.