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

I've been sitting on a bench in the sun, on London's Streatham Common, watching the birds and insects and the phenomenal streams of people and traffic, all piling past at high speed like they've got somewhere important to go. The aerial photograph of Streatham looks like someone has tipped ten tons of rubble onto a car park and spread it around; but at street level, it's quite pleasant. There are cherry trees blooming everywhere, and the shabby little shop fronts give it a small-town air that's not overcome by the dual carriageway thundering down the middle of it.

What am I doing here? I came to see a play by MrFlay and a guy called Chas, which was showing in Soho. Sadly, Gothly had too much work on to join me, so instead I took along the older one of my brothers (let's call him Deswald). Having invited myself to stay at Deswald's, it was only fair that I bought him a ticket to see the play.

"There may not be a kitchen when you get here," Deswald had warned me. "They've got builders coming in to demolish it."

"So how are you going to do your cooking?" I'd asked.

"Cooking?" Deswald was baffled. Turns out he never cooks.

"Well, what do you live on?" I'd asked, remembering that he's big on Japanese food.

"Noodles. 9p a packet. I stick 'em in a mug and add hot water. Bingo!"



Around the beginning of last week, I phoned Deswald to check whether I'd have something to cook on when I got to his place.

"Oh--is it *this* Thursday you're coming?" he asked.

"Yes," I told him.

"Oh, God," he said. "Um... I'm probably not going to be here when you arrive."

"What?"

"Well, I'm supposed to be in a meeting and, well, I've already rescheduled it from last Friday, because I slept in and missed it."

"...So will there be someone to answer the door to me?" I asked.

"Er... probably."

I put on my most dangerous tone of voice. "Deswald?" I said.

"Absolutely, one hundred percent certainty, without a shadow of a doubt," uttered Deswald quickly.

"Good."

"But it might be a builder."

"A builder?" I considered this. "Do they know I'm coming? Will they let me in?"

"Er...."

"Deswald?"

"They will do."

Sheesh. Then the night before I was due to set off, Deswald rang me.

"Is it *this* weekend you're coming, or *next* weekend?" he asked.

"THIS weekend!" I told him.

"Argh, no!" he cried. "Excuse me while I run around and panic! Argh! Argh! WhatamIgonnado?"

He had booked the landlord's spare room for the wrong dates, and there was some old American geezer staying in it on the date I was due to arrive.

"Hmmm," said Gothly wrily when I relayed the problem, "I wonder where *Deswald's* going to sleep."

Deswald has been sleeping on the sofa.

I have been able to cook, though. The cooker is standing amidst a load of rubble, scaffolding and mousetraps, but it works, so I've been cooking Deswald gourmet meals and trying to get him enthused about vitamins and things. Not with a great deal of success. And I keep finding mousetraps stuck to the soles of my boots.



Deswald told me that, if we set off for Soho one hour before the play was due to start, we'd have time and to spare. So off we set at 7pm. The first train arrived at nearly half past.

"We'regonnabelate!" muttered Deswald helpfully, every five minutes. One change later, on the tube, he suddenly said, "this is the wrong train."

We got off at the next station, intending to change our route; unfortunately, there was only one possible route for commuters at that station. The silver lining was that the train we had just got off was, in fact, the right train.

When we arrived above ground near Soho, Deswald said, "I wish I'd remembered to bring my A-Z."

"Don't worry," I said valiantly, "I've examined the map and I've got a photographic image of it in my head."

But everything was a whole lot bigger than it had seemed on the map and, after ten minutes of fruitless circling, we started asking people for directions. But this was Soho. Everybody was drunk, stoned, or tripping, and most of them were tourists who were also lost. My legs muscles felt like par-boiled spaghetti, and my speech was getting slurry from all the exertion. The sight of the theatre's neon sign softly illuminating a back street was like stumbling upon Shangri-La.

We were twenty minutes late, and the play was only an hour long. Glad that I'd bought the tickets in advance, I handed my receipt over to the ticket lady.

"I'm sorry," she said. "The play's already started. You can't go in."

The strength of my disappointment came as a shock. It felt like a punch in the throat. I had to turn my back on the woman and stick my fist in my mouth to stop the burning behind my eyes. How strange. I'm used to cancelling things at the last moment because of my CFS playing up. This was only a damn play, so why was it so different? I had made a fatal error: I had actually let myself believe. I don't do that, not when my life is so short on guarantees--but I'd let myself believe that I would be seeing MrFlay's play. What an idiot. What a fool.

Next installment coming up!

ohhh

I hope this has a happy ending..at some point, perhaps even MrFlay might come up with something?

I read this earlier and had nothing to say, it sounds like such a disaster. But I must join with MV and say that I hope this has a happy ending.

Yup. It does.

and?

Sheesh, gimme half a chance! I've had trouble getting to a computer.

I seem to have been a good influence on Deswald after all. He tells me he's started buying real food lately, with vitamins in and everything.

And his level of work procrastination has dropped.

What a good sister I am.

Your a great sister!

It's a bit like that at my mother's, too. I was knocking up an omelette and some garlic mushrooms there recently, and my sister came into the kitchen and said, "hey! That's Jamie Oliver cooking!"

--Shortly followed by, "what's an omelette?"

!!!


(For you foreigners out there, Jamie Oliver is a TV chef who's on a campaign to make school dinners nutritious instead of being reconstituted burgers and chips. He did a survey which found that most British kids have never seen a vegetable.)