Today is Towel Day, an annual celebration of the life and work of Douglas Adams.
Listen. It’s a tough universe. There’s all sorts of people and things trying to do you, kill you, rip you off, everything. If you’re going to survive out there, you’ve really got to know where your towel is.
If you are a fan of Douglas Adams – and you should be – then today is the day to mark his passing in the most appropriate way possible: keep your towel with you for the day.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the subject of towels. “A towel,” it says, “is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has a practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you travel the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand to hand combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bug Blatter Beast of Traal (a mind bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you- daft as a brush, but very very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course, dry yourself off if it seems to be clean enough.
So long Douglas, and thanks for all the fish!
Lightly Seared on the Reality Grill 