>It also appeals to me that this Perth is stupidly remote, too. Well, that's kind of the whole joke; it's predicated on the idea that there's a city way on the edge of Avalon that a lot of people don't seem to know is there, but which is actually much nicer than the man-on-the-street elsewhere would expect. Primary inspiration, if I'm honest, came from the ASCII maps of Australia that were popular in USENET sigblocks in my WPI student days, almost all of which had an asterisk way over on the lefthand side cheerfully labeled, "Perth!-->"
In this particular story the joke is doubled, in a way, by the fact that the Stig has no reason at all to be shopping for groceries (or, er, whatever he's buying) in Perth. The Top Gear test track isn't even in the Zeta Cygni system. It's on London Prime, one of the Rigel Sector Crown Colonies, where the BBC relocated after the Earth Alliance crackdown of 2406.
--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.