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

I've decided to run the London Marathon this year. This was a bit crazy because I smoke too much, drink too much, and don't exercise enough. What I didn't realise though, is that one of the hardest things about this Marathon is just registering to run it. You can't just pay an entrance fee and start running. Either you have to be a professional athlete, very young or very old, work for a big corporation that gets a block of tickets, or run for a charity.
Well, I found out about a leukemia charity and that sounded pretty good. So I sent them an application and two weeks later I got a rejection letter. They didn't want my money!
This was going to be tougher than I thought.
Then I found out about Shelter. They work with the homeless and poorly housed people. One of my friends gave them a glowing reference, so I sent them an application along with a fifty quid fee and a begging letter. They called me a week later to tell me I wasn't accepted but I was sixth on their waiting list.
"When you say sixth" I said, "Does that mean I have a very good chance of being accepted or virtually no chance?"
"Well" said the bored mystery voice from Shelter, "We can't really say. It all depends on how many people cancel. Some people might get injured training..."
"Yeah, yeah I know. But what happened last year? Did no one cancel or did twenty people?"
"Well" repeated the bored mystery voice, "Every year's different. It all depends on how many people cancel. Some people might get injured training..."

I was getting nowhere. I did some more searching and found out that some religious and antidrug charities might still have places. Yeah right. Somehow I didn't feel inspired to run 26.2 miles for the Stop Smoking Pot for Jesus Crusade. This was quite discouraging.
Work intervened for a couple of weeks, and then I got a wake up call at 8:30 in the morning.

Ring! Ring!

"Yeah."
"This is bored mystery person from Shelter." [She didn't actually refer to herself like that by the way]
"Yeah?"
"Are you still interested in running the Marathon?"
"Yeah!"
"Can you get to our offices right away?"
"Yeah..."
By 10 am I had stopped saying yeah and just finished signing a bunch of forms that Shelter had to rush off to the Marathon people.
It was now official. Now all I had to do was train and raise tons of money.
The secretaries at work promised they'd get the department to fork over some hard earned cash. So I brought them the sponsorship forms and asked them to send a quick email out.
The next day everyone around me at work was laughing. All at once people started saying "Now everyone knows" and "Is that what you wanted it to say" and "Start running."

I checked my email.
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From: Lynda ...
Sent: 06 March 2002 15:03
To: department@...
Subject: Josh ...

Josh has entered the London Marathon and is trying to raise money for SHELTER, the charity for homeless people.

I have the sponsorship forms on my desk.

He says he’s going to do it in four hours, but at the moment is only running 9 miles uphill! So he’s going to need any awful lot of encouragement as 26 miles is nearly three times he’s present average even if it’s on the flat. Ways of helping him are:

1 To pledge your money
2 If you see him having a quiet fag tell him that he’ll need all the puff he can get
3 If you see him walking, remind him to run!

Thanks
Lynda
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Great. Now the whole department knew I was a slacker who'd bitten off more than I can chew!!