Towel Day 2023.

I tried a cheery greeting. I tried a funny one-liner. I tried a H2G2 quote. I tried rhyming frood and dude. I tried composing Vogon poetry. I tried sardonic wit. I tried understated humour.

But given the state of this world, I have nothing to say to you today on this Towel Day but this:

There’ll be times when you find yourself drunk on a field in Innsbruck, or even lying down in the mud in front of a yellow bulldozer.

There’ll be times when you’d hope for a Vogon Constructor Fleet to tear down the planet to build a Hyperspace Bypass just so that this world as you know it (and all the Thursdays in it) ends in a spectacular fireball.

There’ll be times when you’d feel like the mice are running the show (or is it dolphins?) and you are just playing a walk-on part in someone’s (maybe Slartibartfast’s) dream.

Maybe you’ll feel like you are plugged into the Total Perspective Vortex and hope for the ground to open up and swallow you just so you could escape the feeling of inadequacy you have started to suspect is rooted more in reality than any fictional imposter complex.

But even in the worst of times, remember that in the end, the answer is 42, that the mice do indeed run the Universe, that you don’t know true pain until you see the beautiful girl you met at a party (and hoped to ask out) being swept away by a three-armed rogue who (also) stole the elections to the Presidentship of the Galaxy, or hear Vogon poetry, whichever is later, and that in the end (and this time, I mean it literally), regardless of what lands you conquer or what art you make, how many lives you touch or what deep secrets of the Universe you uncover, what wealth you acquire or how many progenies you make, this Earth, this planet, this pale blue dot of Dr Sagan, can’t aspire for anything more impressive than be described as: Mostly Harmless.

Happy Towel Day to you all! Don’t panic. And may you always know where your towel is.