It's often said, isn't it, that "Nature abhors a hole" and that she struggles, perhaps at times unwillingly, to "fill it". And yet a lot of people can't help liking holes can they, and get real pleasure from "plugging them" - you must have noticed!
They can also be a real "spur" to action, like for this local man who spots a hole in one of his "bin bags", just as he's thinking of popping it out to his "wheelie-bin".
But we've all "bin" there, haven't we [no pun intended!!]. Am I right? Or am I right!!!
Yes, and we've all felt that sickening sensation of cold tea dripping down our legs from a hundredweight of undried-out, cold, smelly tea bags at 7 am in the morning, when we're rushing out of the house to the wheelie-bin, because the "bin men" are coming, "allegedly" at any time after 8 am, or so they tell us !!!!
a typical "Norse Group" bin lorry, contractors to East Hampshire
District Council, busy emptying bins in our home-town of Liphook, Hampshire
Yes, holes, and the pains and the pleasures of the whole business of "plugging" those holes, are something my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois and I know all about, let me tell you!
me and my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois -
"Holes - we got 'em" is our cry !!!!
Yes, and we've got two big holes right here in our new living-room, just because the previous residents liked the "open-plan look", apparently. And ourselves having bought this house and moved in just two and a half months ago, we've been thinking about how to plug "them there holes" (!), and keep some of that pesky "draught" out, a draught which is especially annoying when we're sitting here in the evenings trying to watch TV with 3 layers of sweaters on!!!!!
our living-room, with (left) "hole 1" which leads to our entrance hall,
and "hole 2" which leads to our kitchen-diner: brrrrrr!!!!!!
And what an open-plan madness it all is !!!!!
And today we finally get around to finding a nice local handyman called Russell, who is coming next Thursday to put some doors back on to "hole 1" and do some "blue-sky thinking" with us about plugging "hole 2" into the kitchen-diner, which should make things a lot cosier in here. And, as the icing on the cake, Lois decides to clean the incredibly dirty rotary clothes-line out in the back garden, so we won't have to drape our damp washing over the radiators any more, which will be a bonus.
Lois today, cleaning the rotary clothes-line in the back garden,
so we won't have to drape our damp washing over the radiators any more!
"Phew, what a scorcher!" is what we'll soon be saying, to put it mildly [no pun intended!!!!].
our two-pronged attack on "cold living-room syndrome": (left) Russell
the Handyman has been engaged to plug the holes in our open-plan "freeze-box" a.k.a
living-rom (!), and (right) Lois in our back garden cleaning the rotary clothes-line so
we won't have to cover our radiators with damp washing any more, which will be nice !!!
[Is that all you two "numpties" have done today, Colin - texted a local handyman and cleaned your rotary washing-line? - Ed]
We take up Douglas's story in 1978 after his Hitchhiker's Guide becomes first a BBC radio serial "smash", and eventually a world-sensation, and Douglas suddenly finds himself extremely rich.
Yes, starting with an obscure early-evening BBC radio series, in the days when radio series weren't even thought important enough to be reviewed in the press, Douglas eventually found himself with "a constellation of money", as Wogan puts it. And the first thing Douglas did with his new-found cash, apparently, was to go out and buy a brand-new Porsche, which he almost immediately "pranged" in a minor accident at London's Hyde Park Corner. Oh dear !!!!
And as an example of "turning the telescope the wrong way round", here's a clip from the early BBC TV version of the book, in which Surrey suburbanite Arthur Dent meets a mysterious stranger, "Ford Prefect", in a pub somewhere near Guildford, and engages him in conversation.
Yes, "Drink up. The World's about to end!" Fascinating stuff isn't it!!!!
American journalist William Kristel on the US conservative website "The Bulwark" has said that in any other era, a security breach on this scale would have had major ramifications. There would have been hearings in Congress, FBI probes, criminal investigations. But in our 'post-truth' world, [Defence Secretary] Pete Hegseth outright denied sharing war plans - despite blatant evidence to the contrary - while Trump tried to discredit [the officially but mistakenly invited Atlantic magazine journalist] Jeffrey Goldberg as a 'total sleazebag'.
One of Douglas's oldest friends, the humourist Stephen Fry, summarises the general dissatisfaction shown by Guildford and other residents on the show after the massive computer's answer came back that "the secret of life, the universe and everything, was simply the number 42".
Douglas himself revealed some time later, that choosing the number 42 was "just his little joke". He added, "Once I'd decided that the answer was going to be a number - and that was the joke - I had to decide what that number should be. I thought it ought to be a fairly small, ordinary number, so why not, well, 42?"
[Well, don't forget the lengthy planning meeting(s) we held before we did either of those two things! - Colin]
20:00 After another hard day (!), we collapse on the couch to watch the remainder of the programme we started viewing last night: the Sky Arts TV documentary all about Douglas Adams, who wrote "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy".
Here's Douglas's story being summarised on Terry Wogan's BBC TV chat show back in the day:
Interviewed on Robert Robinson's chat-show, it was put to Douglas that comedy might "destroy the seriousness which which the sci-fi genre should be taken, to which Douglas replied as follows:
While we're watching the programme, Lois is reading me out clips from her this week's copy of "The Week" magazine, which gives a digest of the top news from home and abroad, and which "plopped" through our letter-box earlier today.
The magazine's popular "Controversy of the Week" column is all about the so-called "Signal leak" in Washington, she says.
"Irresponsibility and illegality' is what Americans voted for - and it's what we've got", said Kristel.
Freddy Gray in the Spectator says "perhaps the most extraordinary aspect of the whole thing is the contempt for Europe expressed in the [leaked text] messages". And Jon Sopel in the Independent, says that, before, it was tempting to dismiss the Trump administration's public attacks on Europe as purely "performative": a theatrical way of pushing America's allies to share more of the security burden. But when you see what Team Trump are saying in private, "you see the raw disdain in which we Europeans are held".
Yikes !!!!
Perhaps Douglas Adams was right after all, and the answer to the big questions about Life, the Universe and Everything is, just the number "forty two".
I wonder..... !!!!
Douglas's long-time collaborator John Lloyd explains:
John Lloyd remembers that there was a time in science years ago, when the so-called "Hubble Constant" - the measure of how fast the universe was expanding - had been found by physicists to be 42. This was news which made Douglas "jump with joy", Lloyd says, because it seemed that he, Douglas. had found the answer to life, the universe and everything, accidentally perhaps, but none the less something he could be genuinely proud of.
Fascinating stuff, isn't it!!!
Will this do?
[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!!!
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