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

I'd make a useless criminal. Everyone remembers me. I was thinking this as I was going for my walk the other day. I wander around minding my own business, and people come up to me and start talking. Aside from the youngsters and drunksters who jeer at my dress sense, I get approached by all sorts of people who seem compelled to tell me about themselves. I'm not sure whether it's the place I live in or what, but every so often a passer-by will give me a mysterious smile, as though I've triggered a memory from their childhood, or they've met me in a dream; then sometime later, I'll meet them again and they'll open a window onto some part of their private life, and allow me to look in and see what's there.

"I've seen you about," they say. Buskers, pensioners, evangelists, whoever. "I've seen you about." Sometimes they give me things, like a rare postage stamp, or a necklace, or a great grey slug.

So there I was walking past the primary school, across the road from which is a cul-de-sac of run-down council houses. My taxi driver tells me it's where the council sends all the alcoholics and drug dealers to live. A man shambled past me, smelling of booze, and he gave me one of those mysterious smiles.

Some minutes later, he appeared out of a side street and fell in step with me. "Hello," he said, "I've seen you about."

"Ah," I replied.

"How are you?" he asked me.

"I'm alright," I said, guardedly. "How are you?"

"Alright," he said, "I suppose.... Well, I could be better, to tell you the truth. I haven't been that well for a long time. But life's like that, isn't it?"

"I suppose it is."

"Whereabouts are you from?" he asked then, gazing at me like a drowning man might view a piece of flotsam.

And we strolled along the road, talking about this and that--the weather, a building site, Gothly. Like me, he seemed unable to walk very fast, and unwilling to acknowledge it. He told me he's a steelworker, "between jobs"; I told him I'm a writer.

"Poetry?" he asked.

"Yes. And other stuff."

He stopped walking. "I love poetry!" he declared. "Edgar Allen Poe: he's my favourite."

Now, normally, if someone says they like Poe, they've only read The Raven, so I smiled and said, "ah. The Raven."

"The Raven's alright," he said, but my favourite is another one."

Surprised, I asked which one. He winced as though I'd hit him, and then he whispered, "I can only tell you by saying it."

"...Go on then."

"I do believe the Lord above," he uttered huskily, and I wondered if he was about to go all religious on me...,
"Created you for me to love." His eyes screwed shut and he surveyed an internal landscape.
"He picked you out from all the rest,
"Because he knew... I'd love you best."

A tear squeezed out, and ran along the deep furrows in his face.

" I once had a heart both tied and true,
"But now it has passed from me to you.
"Take care of it as I have done,
"For now you have two, and I have none."

Another tear trickled down.

"If I get to heaven and you're not there,
"I'll write your name on the golden stair,
"So all the angels may know and see
"Just how much you mean to me.
"If you're not there...."

And he stood there in the middle of the pavement, silently crying, with the traffic hurtling past him, lost in some wilderness I could only guess at. After some minutes he drew a breath and he said,

"If you're not there by Judgement Day,
"I'll know you've gone the other way.
"I'll give the angels back their wings,
"Their halos, and those other things,
"And just to prove my love is true,
"I'll go to Hell to be with you."

He opened his eyes. The spell was broken. Not knowing what else to say, I said, "Edgar Allen Poe?" (I had thought I knew all Poe's poems, but I didn't know this one.)

"Edgar Allen Poe," he agreed. As we set off down the road I felt that some further response was required of me, so I said, "he lost his wife when he was quite young."

The man began to cry again. "My wife walked out on me," he sobbed. "Years ago. She went to South America. I've never loved anybody else. She took my daughter with her.... My daughter will be twenty-eight now."

And then our routes diverged, and he shook my hand warmly in farewell. "It's been *really* good meeting you," he said, "*really* good." And he gave me another of those mysterious smiles--as though... as though.

Poignant, and unexpected.

Thanks for sharing, I take it you found the poem then? Or do you have fabulous total recall? Or perhaps a lil tape player in your pocket for just such an occasion?

How strange the way you are perceived, I would have to move if people came upto me that much!

What a wonderful recounting, it reminds me of Chaucer. It deserves a Canterbury Tales treatment, so the fact that it happens to be true can be conveniently ignored. Here in LA (where the truth is so often conveniently ignored) such a tale would start with a shared cigarette (or joint, as the case may be) or in the waiting room of a public health establishment.

'It Happened One Night' with Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert has a journalist protagonist.



Snailrind is the sort of person who gives paper to people and cares for even the earthly critterlings. It doesn't surprise me that people would choose to speak.

In my twenties I was the sort of person that butterflies would land on and hummingbirds would fly near, but by the time I hit thirty, this effect wore off. Now I am in my forties, gentlefolk of the African American persuasion are finding me interesting. Go figure. Maybe this just happens to be a biological stage of Snailrindiness.

Vix, I wrote the poem down when I got back to the house. when my health is good, my memory for verse is good. I may not have remembered it exactly, but it's more or less there. It helped that the guy delivered it so well, putting meaning and feeling into every word. I just had to picture him saying it and the words came back to me.

I used to have a li'l tape recorder, but you may recall that Gothly broke it by snoring into it.

Sorrel, yeah, it used to really freak me out: I called myself a "Wierdo Magnet." I've since learned that there's a lot of lonely people around and they just want someone to talk to for a bit. It's no effort for me to listen to them, and they usually turn out to be interesting.

Sea Change, I keep seeing references on the GetWriting threads to a Canterbury Tales challenge that people were doing some time ago. Do you happen to know what that was?

" Here in LA... such a tale would start... in the waiting room of a public health establishment."

Round here, they'd talk about their bunions.

"Snailrind is the sort of person who gives paper to people"

Paper? I tell you, it's a lie!

"In my twenties I was the sort of person that butterflies would land on and hummingbirds would fly near"

St. Sea Change of Assissi.
Did you used to wear more white and blue?

"Now I am in my forties, gentlefolk of the African American persuasion are finding me interesting."

What kinds of stuff do they talk about?

"Maybe this just happens to be a biological stage of Snailrindiness."

Perhaps I'll start pupating soon....

I am envious that you have such a good recall of words spoken

What a powerful listener.

I'd forgotten about the tape recorder and the snoring..!

I recall the paper giving too ..

Certainly you are the kind of person that I would like to meet in RL

> a "Wierdo Magnet."

I'm mostly a child magnet but also insect/critter magnet and to some extent a weirdo magnet.

> GetWriting threads to a Canterbury Tales challenge

That's how the whole site started. Once the BBC had got what they wanted out of it in the way of freebies (or near freebies) though, it got run down and scheduled for closure.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2003/07_july/07/canterbury_tales.shtml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/drama/canterburytales/

> Paper?

Music manuscript paper as I recall.

> Perhaps I'll start pupating soon

Does that mean the next hat will have wings.

Thanks for the Canterburt Tales links: now I know. It's a shame the site's got to die a death now. I've been really getting into it lately. I've even been shortlisted in their ballad competition.

I remember about the manuscript paper now. That busker's still around. He sounds fantastic these days: he's really progressed. A guy who runs a local orchestra approached him to ask if he'd like to join it, but the busker turned him down, because he prefers to do his own thing. He reckons he's "not a people person."

"Does that mean the next hat will have wings."

Possibly, because my brother went from having a trilby to having a hat with wings. A great huge furry thing it was, very warm. He gave it to a beggar in the end.... I guess it runs in the family.

Oh, and Vix:

I bumped into that busker again.

"Hi, [Snailrind]!" he said, "I'm learning to play The Pink Panther. Have a listen to this."

And he played it on his saxophone, to the delight of me and everyone else in the street. It was a cold grey day, and the music was like a beam of sunshine. Passers-by started grinning all over their faces and chucking pound coins into his coin box.

Everyone loves The Pink Panther.

How wonderful...yeh me too, I like the music, the *silent* cartoon and Peter Sellers, David Nivan and the long suffering boss of Inspector Cluso..or however that is spelt..

Yes, a good composer that Henry Mancini. NB The detective's name is "Clouseau".

The CDC played the PP music as a foxtrot in tribute when he died. One of my favourite bits of incidental music though is from the earlier film, "A Shot In The Dark" - but that hasn't been available on CD. It's a lovely little french-style waltz at the beginning where they are all busy swapping over rooms.

I heard that there is going to be a New PP film, I can't imagine it with out Peter Sellers tho or his sidekick

http://www.mgm.com/pinkpantherthemovie/

They made the last film *after* Peter Sellers was dead - using out-takes of him from previous films and a stand-in for non-close-up shots. With computer animation and speech synthesis improving all the time, it looks like it is soon going to be a mere detail whether or not an actor is alive in order to appear in a film.

Already happened... kinda...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/arts/3926465.stm

Bizarre. It's not as though another actor couldn't have done it. I wonder if the fact that he's dead reduced the costs.

Going back to the title of this thread, it's finally dawned on me why so many people stop me and tell me they've "seen me around." I can't believe I never realised it before. It's my hat!

I had thought that it wouldn't stand out much, because quite a few people around here wear brimmed hats. Then the other day I saw a woman walking down the street in a brimmed hat, and she stuck out a mile. Wherever I went in town, there she seemed to be, and very eyecatching she was too. It was only then that I realised that everyone else I had seen in a brimmed hat was *male*. No wonder people recognise me!

So the hat is famous and you are merely tagging along for the ride. Does it count as being a gold-digger or groupie or whatever if you are part of the entourage of a hat?

"Where did you get that hat? Where did you get that tile?"

"All around my hat I will wear the green willow-snail"

Are we going to see a picture of this extraordinary hat?

Tile, SEF

A picture, eh? Maybe. I'll get back to you on that after I've worked out how to make the Gimp do what *I* want instead of what *it* wants. You're in for a disappointment, though. It's just a bog-standard hat.