DeDanaan

Filed by Aine MacDermot

Towel : Just about the most massively useful thing any interstellar Hitchhiker can carry. For one thing it has great practical value - you can wrap it around you for warmth on the cold moons of Jaglan Beta, sun bathe on it on the marble beaches of Santraginus Five, huddle beneath it for protection from the Arcturan Megagnats as you sleep beneath the stars 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 avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal, and even dry yourself off with it if it still seems clean enough. It can be used for snaring birds whilst falling from a three-mile high marble statue. It can be used to signal temporally unstable spaceships by fossilizing them in planetary strata. More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitchhiker) discovers that a hitchhiker 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 hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitchhiker might accidentally have “lost”. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the MultiVerse, rough it, slum it, struggle against mind-boggling odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with. Hence a phrase which has passed into hitchhiking slang, as in “Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There’s a frood who really knows where his towel is.” One of the first things that Ford Prefect did for Arthur Dent after the demolition of the Earth by the Vogons was to equip him with a towel. The Hitchhiker’s Guide is full of suggestions for successful towel deployment.

It is worth noting that a cup of white vinegar in a wash will help keep your towels fluffy and soft.