Blazing Reader:

Don’t panic! I haven’t lost my mind. Just my shirt. No, seriously, it really is Towel Day. Okay, as serious as you can get about this little-known anniversary.

Since his death in 2001, fans of British novelist Douglas Adams commemorate his life by carrying around a towel every May 25th. As described in his classic novel, Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a towel is “about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have”…

"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 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 Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such 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 with it if it still seems to be clean enough."

Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a fun mix of sci-fi and humour with some thought-provoking metaphors about the meaning of life, the universe and everything. I recently re-read it to my son Jonah...

..., and now he is quite prepared to defend himself against the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Trall.

Stay sane and read fun books,
–John C. A. Manley

PS For more about Douglas Adams and his books you can visit his website. And for more about this bizarre celebration visit the official Towel Day website.

PPS If my novel becomes a cult classic like Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy,  readers could carry around a pine cone for the entire day on the anniversary of my death. At nightfall they can light it on fire and watch it blaze. We can call it Blazing Pine Cone Day.

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