Thursdays

Douglas Adams on Thursdays:

And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, one girl sitting on her own in a small cafe in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything.

Sadly, however, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone about it, a terribly stupid catastrophe occurred, and the idea was lost forever.

This is not her story.

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One Thursday lunchtime the Earth is unexpectedly demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass. For Arthur Dent, who has only just had his house demolished that morning, this seems already to be more than he can cope with. Sadly, however, the weekend has only just begun, and the galaxy is a very strange and startling place.

The story begins with a house. Not a remarkable house, by any means. The only person for whom the house was in any way special was Arthur Dent, and that was only because it happened to be the one he lived in.

At 8:00 on Thursday morning, Arthur woke up blearily, got up, put on his bathrobe, wandered round his room, opened a window, saw several big yellow bulldozers, found his slippers, and stomped off to the bathroom to wash. He drank a large glass of water.

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"This must be Thursday," said Arthur to himself, sinking low over his beer, "I never could get the hang of Thursdays."