h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Scenario 1: Imagine you're Bob the Commuter. Every morning, your alarm goes off at 6am so that you can get up and get ready in time to catch your 7am train to work.

Unfortunately, every morning, when your alarm goes off at 6am so that you can get up and get ready in time to catch your 7am train to work, you switch it off and go back to sleep.

Suddenly you wake up and realise that it's 6.45am, it takes you about ten minutes to get to the station, and you're not up, ready, or anything even resembling vertical.

You have a decision - eat breakfast and risk almost certainly missing the train, or go without and pay extortionate amounts for food on the train. Or you could not have anything at all, but you wouldn't want that, would you?

What Bob needs is... TOAST BY POST(tm)! In the early hours of every weekday morning, the Toast By Post couriers fly round the UK's major cities, dropping little heat-sealed foil sachets through letterboxes. When Bob the Commuter gets up in the morning, after his usual lie-in and ensuing panic about missing the train, he can just drag himself out of bed (remembering to put his jacket on the right way) and leave for the station, TAKING THE SACHET WITH HIM! Once safely on the train, he simply rips open the sachet, removes his two slices of hot buttered toast (by post) and munches away. Loverly!



Scenario 2: Imagine you're a student (who, for reasons known only to her, shall be named Laura). You had a great night out last night, and the night before that actually, but you're beginning to feel the effects of it now. Plus, you've just remembered you've got an exam tomorrow morning.

You stagger out of bed, noting that it's gone 11am, and attempt to calibrate your hands and eyes enough to pour some cereal into a bowl. This fails when you tip the box too far and it all pours onto the counter. Your efforts to open a tin of beans are thwarted when you discover that (for some unfathomable reason which seemed hilarious last night) your tin opener isn't where you left it. And we won't even consider attempting to get out of the front door and round the corner to the greasy spoon.

Luckily, you'd thought ahead. At that moment, the letterbox clatters and you remember the TOAST BY POST(tm) order you placed on Friday afternoon. Hungrily, you tear open the sachet, to discover not only your two slices of toast (by post) but also a complimentary serving of jam, to help you return to some sense of normality. Anything you can't cope with after that is, therefore, your own problem.



Think it'll sell?

I think it's a beautiful idea which will NEVER sell

For one thing, many people have family who will do these things for them, another if they have a pet then the toast will meet a BAD end before it's snatched up, and if you have to leave at altering times throughout the week (as my dad has to) then you'd be forever changing your toast time. And people want different things on their toast and...

Okay it's just not practical But a sweet idea

Kat

A beautiful eligent, simple, wonderous, effective solution to a real problem faced by millions. A solution that is wonderous in its simplicity and ease at solving the problem, no right minded business person would turn this down as a realistic produce to offer to the public. Oh, can you sign me up to it too, wholemeal bread please, and butter, not marg.

Well, they'd all be delivered in the early hours, but because they're heat-sealed they'd last until you're ready to leave

Toast? By? Post?

Oh yes

You could also have a special dilivery service for bachalors like meself, dilivering toast for middight supper

I think the costs of early morning courier delivery would be high enough But it's certainly an expansion idea

How about some kind of flash-fission device to heat the toast after it arrives?

Toast By Post

You can tell Steph likes this idea Now to determine whether that's ridicule- or support-type laughter...

The point is that the toast is hot when it arrives, and stays hot because the sachet is somehow sealed. It's hot when it's cooked, and when you take it out of the sachet it's still hot.

Please note that this has absolutely nothing to do with http://www.toastbypost.co.uk

But they don't sell toast

....... I don't eat toast.....................................

Do you eat chicken?

Roast by post?

Hmmm... sounds good!

Doesn't it just... although there may be gravy difficulties.

(You see since they shut down the Post Office line, the gravy train hasn't been running...)

Oh well, I don't like gravy anyway.

Still, it's a darn sight better than ghost by post...