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

All the way home tonight I could see Venus, high above the horizon, magnitude 3.75 (mental calculation - that's about 2/3 as bright as it gets, right?). I took the kids out to see it. After they'd got over the usual teenage shrugging they were impressed. Jupiter was looking good, too.

It gives me another chance to re-post my favourite po-yem:

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/corporate/projectsandschemes/artmusicdesign/poems/poem.asp?ID=132

Translation on request.

End with a song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tw4VNKXDhc

Ah Mars ... the crimson planet.

Braw!

(as they say in Swedish)

And in Irish.

That so, that so?

'Very good' is 'Mycket Bra' - which is basically the Dundonian 'Michty Braw' of Sunday Post 'Oor Wullie' cartoon fame.

I re-started my Swedelish audio course at lunchtime today. Scots and German give a lot of toeholds - except I keep substituting German words for the nearly-the-same-as-German ones, if you see what I mean. Giving a presentation in Sweden a while back I was going to use a slide that said 'Look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves' - until I realised that the Scots would probably be intelligible: 'Mony's a mickle maks a muckle'.

The pronunciation's , but. The good thing about the audio course is that it's getting my mouth used to making the shapes before I'm confused by seeing it written down. It's also getting my brain used to assembling sentences while I'm trying to do something (ie make the right noises) at the same time.