From Amsterdam to Betelgeuse

I somehow ended up with a dutch audiobook version of Douglas Adams' classic sci fi story, The Hitch-hiker's guide to the Galaxy. I go through periods where I will have my ipod connected to the car's hifi, and it popped up on shuffle the other day.

Familiarity with the story, and the distinctive names of the characters made it possible to actually follow what was going on, at least some of the time. I seem to remember that linguists consider the Dutch and English languages to be close cousins, which also helps.

But it was an interesting experience, and one that allowed me to interact with the story in an unusual way. It made me think.

Still, like the cartoon at the top of this post, much of it was "blah blah blah blah blah blah Arthur blah blah blah blah Zaphod blah blah blah", mixed with semi garbled familiar words and phrases, like "teleporten" for example.

driving lessons in Wallasey? learn to drive in Wirral? driving instructor in Birkenhead?

The Flipside of Dominic Hyde

I don't know what brought this to mind tonight.

It was first shown in 1980, and repeated in 1982. I don't know which one I saw but I was either 12 or 14 when I saw it, and it stuck in my mind, although I could remember almost nothing of it.

So I looked for it, and found the whole 90 minute programme sliced up into 10 minute youtube sections, and I've just watched them all now.

They start with the one below and you should find links to next as each one finishes.

Conveniently, the next one starts by repeating the last few seconds of the previous one, which means there are no jarring little bits missing between the episodes.



I really enjoyed it. It's a simple enough science fiction story that is grounded not in big budget special effects, but in being a good story well told.

There's an excellent review (contains spoilers) of it at TV cream.