Twitchhiker | Paul Smith's travel tales from here and there

Woke up this morning to an amazing tweet from @cliveflint. To clarify, the tweet didn’t wake me up, and neither did Clive. I merely read it on my iPod Touch while still in bed:

When @flashboy and I had done the live twinterview yesterday, he hadn’t mentioned the article might be published in the real world, so Clive’s Twitpic of Tom’s piece made me feel all gooey inside:

Then the goo turned into gushing fluid when texts started chirping on the mobile; it was splashed on the front page too! Less then four days after my first tweet, Twitchhiker has managed front page coverage on a national newspaper. I checked into my personal Twitter account and retweeted the good news, which generated this slightly dark message from @alexanderhorre:

That iconic stare. What the christing hell does that mean, then? Um. Gah. No idea. Next:

While studying French as a 14 year-old, I learnt the phrase I need a shopping trolley, where are they please? to the tune of a radio commercial jingle for AFG Darlington Motors in Darlington, believing it to be vital to an upcoming speaking test. It wasn’t. And so while I may be capable of requesting transport for my weekly groceries, it’s now the sum total of my French vocabulary. I’ve no idea what @eogez is talking about, bless her.

But that’s why God Yahoo Douglas Adams invented the babelfish:

In this instance, the babelfish appears to have gone on the lash with his friends Captain Stella and first mate Jim Beam. I can’t imagine what context would require mention of a Peking express train, but if you can speak the language better than a pissed-up fish stuck in your ear, please let me know.

Tweets aside, today saw a nice feature about Twitchhiker on BBC Tyne, and if you live in Yorkshire in the UK and listen to Galaxy (there are nearly a million adults who do) you might have caught me on Hirsty’s Daily Dose at breakfast time. In a former life I used to be the producer for Simon, Danny and Jojo; one of my biggest regrets is that I didn’t stay longer in the best radio job I ever had.

Finally, you can hear me ramble on about Twitchhiker with Nadine O’Regan on Phantom 105.2, Dublin’s indie-rock station, tomorrow morning from 11am. Now, time to put my dancing pants on; it’s @minxlj‘s birthday and I desperately need to get drunk after one of the oddest weeks of my life.