Jason Hazeley - The Ladybird Book of the Nerd

THE LADYBIRD BOOKS FOR GROWNUPS SERIES

THE NERD

by

J.A. Hazeley, N.S.F.W. and J.P. Morris, O.M.G.

(Authors of I Think Youll Find Theres Only One Road In Britain On Which You Are Legally Obliged To Drive On The Right And I Think Youll Find Its Outside The Savoy Hotel In London As A Matter Of Fact)

Publishers: Ladybird Books Ltd., Loughborough
Printed in England. If wet, Italy.

Martin Aitchison

Robert Ayton

John Berry

Ronald Sydney Embleton

Roger Hall

Frank Hampson

Kenneth Inns

Jack Matthew

Bernard Robinson

Harry Wingfield

THE AUTHORS would like to record their gratitude and offer their apologies to the many Ladybird artists whose luminous work formed the glorious wallpaper of countless childhoods. Revisiting it for this book as grown-ups has been a privilege.

This is a nerd.

He has a PhD and works in the biochemistry lab of a university hospital.

But this is not what makes him a nerd.

His catalogued and indexed collection of over 6,000 empty crisp packets does that.

Wilbur has been waiting all his life to see this longlost Doctor Who story Inheritance Of The Worgons.

The episodes have been lovingly restored so that the sound and image are as good as they were in 1969.

Unfortunately, so are the plot, budget and pacing.

The BBC plans to lose all the recent series of Doctor Who so that nerds will like them too.

Gwaedlys is determined to win an argument about the name of Aethelflaeds secondfavourite horse. She has spent four hours in the library trying to find a source that agrees with her, but has had no luck.

She will now start an argument with the librarians about the quality of their stock. She will not win that one either.

This comic meet is taking place in a convention centre in Leicester. There is only creamflow bitter on tap, or Fosters.

Ogden, Winston and Juliet are smuggling bottles of craft ale in to the centre under cover of darkness.

If the other convention goers spot them, they will be killed for their booty.

Everyone at work knows that Helen is a Star Wars nerd.

My big thing Star Wars is, hmm? Yes? That was my Yoda impression! Excuse the nerd!

Star Wars is one of the defining cultural phenomena of the last hundred years and has been seen by over a billion people.

Oliver has been painting this Elven Paladin miniature for the last six months.

He looks at the rest of the unpainted chess set. There are an awful lot of pawns.

This is a toy shop.

It has models of robots and superheroes. There are cars and dollies and fun things about popular television programmes and cartoons and films.

You can tell it is a toy shop and not a hobby shop because the members of staff do not have any piercings and their tshirts do not look as though they have been through the wash 1,000 times.

Jenna has given up writing cyberpunk fan fiction because the field is too crowded and the fan comments are too mainstream.

Her 15th Century wickerpunk reboot of Firefly is proving to have a reassuringly niche appeal.

The latest OS update has a few bugs, says Nico. And I dont much like the new font, says Tom. Me neither, says Toby.

Craig says nothing. He still uses Netscape Navigator 1.0 because it has never been bettered, he will insist, if you ask him, which you shouldnt.

His weekly blog about still using Netscape Navigator 1.0 is available by mail order, as Netscape Navigator 1.0 will no longer connect to the internet.

For his art project, Garf has taken the jpegs of his weekend in Snowdonia and transferred them to colour slides. He will then project the slides on to a screen and film the results on a vintage 16mm cine camera, before choosing still frames from the developed film, scanning them and showing the finished jpegs on an iPad.

Garf tends to eat yellow food.

Amanda is making costumes for World Book Day at Viola and Harrys school.

If anyone asks, Amanda tells the children, say you are Wasp from the Avengers and Violator from the Spawn universe.

Amanda has a wellrehearsed speech about how comics count as books.

Someone will probably enjoy this.

Horatio has been up all night correcting the Wikipedia page for a 1968 Gerry Anderson TV pilot that was wiped in 1973.

He is happy to see that the page is now slightly longer than the page for the Crimean War.

Wanda and Ed met at work. They share many enthusiasms, like the music of They Might Be Giants and the film Napoleon Dynamite.

One night they sit by the river watching shooting stars. Wanda remarks on how romantic it is.

Ed replies by talking for fifteen minutes about meteor showers, especially the Quadrantids and the Leonids. He is very clever.

Ed will never notice the way Wanda looks at him.