YOU NEED A TOWEL!

We've had far more rain in the last week than in the entire previous three months. It neither affected my travels nor my time, seeing as I spent a very large part of that period indoors. Still, I got to tell a lot of people to "stay dry", even as they headed out into the storm, and not getting wet was not part of their immediate prospect.

I just peered out of the window.
It looks like it will rain again.
Stay dry, y'all. Stay dry.


Ideally, what one should do in rainy weather is lie on the couch in the living room, positioned so that one can look out over the street.
Naked, and underneath a comfy throw rug.
With another person.

Occasionally one or other of you gets up, pads to the kitchen to fetch tea and cookies, then hurries back to the warm nest. One may read, one may doze. Or one may do other things.

If one is a smoker, and the other one isn't, the tobacco aficionado may have to step out of the room at intervals to light up his pipe. It's only polite and companionable to do so. And equally, the non-smoking woman should also put on her clothes at that point and keep the smoker company.

I can think of no better use to put an umbrella than that.

Then go back inside for more tea and cookies.

As well as reading and dozing.

Think about it.




As a practical consideration, there should be two towels within handy reach. Alternatively, one very large and absorbent one.
This is essential.

According to the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy:

"A towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value - you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across 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 mini raft 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 to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal; you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have "lost". What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with."

It goes without saying that the towel should be clean, fluffy, and smell absolutely April-fresh.

As Dale Breckenridge Carnegie would no doubt explain "if your towel is clean and fluffy, you too will be clean and fluffy."
Everybody should strive to be thus.
As well as April-fresh.
Absolutely.



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NOTE: Readers who might wish to inspect my towels may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
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