Today is potentially shaping up to be another One of Those Days, but I’ve had a change of heart – or possibly a change of head – about it. Yesterday actually didn’t turn out too badly: though I didn’t get much work done I did go for a walk, dig a bit of garden (the soil is still very heavy), make dinner and arrange with Son to go to the cinema: we’re going this aft to see ‘Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri’ a rather long and prosaic title for a film which promises to be very interesting. It won several Oscars.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5027774/?ref_=nv_sr_1
At the moment I am finding it hard to keep my head in one place; it keeps darting off here, there and everywhere, a little like Zaphod Beeblerox’s spare noggin which is continually wandering off on its own. Which brings me to the (imagine Peter Jones’s voice saying this) ‘the rather disappointing and increasingly unfeasible hexagonal phase of the totally remarkable Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.’ Yes, alas, despite featuring much of the original cast, plus Stephen Hawking as the Book, it was as OH described, lame and disappointing. I suspect that Adams himself had milked just about as much as could be milked from this, in his words, ‘next volume of the increasingly inaccurately-named Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy’ for, though the universe may be expanding infinitely, the same does not apply to a radio series.
That it was originally written for radio is a point hugely in its favour, however; as they keep saying, the pictures are better on radio and you can do things with sound which would be impossible on TV. Of course, not being a Radio 4 listener at the time (I only listened to music radio) I first came across it with the TV adaptation in 1981:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081874/
though I was swiftly thereafter introduced to the radio series by Peter, who had the whole thing on tape:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy_(radio_series)
Go and get Zaphod
I’ve just worked out the square root of minus one. It’s never been done before. It’s always been thought impossible.
Go and get Zaphod!
Here I am, brain the size of a planet….
Repeat at infinitum…
(Don’t ask.)
Here’s the new series, if you want to bother:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09th4hf
Kirk out
Sarada Gray 