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

Now I know some people love them and collect them, and that tea just isn't the same if it's not made in one, but why do they have to dribble so alamingly? Has no-one invented a REALLY dribble-free spout?

Buy 4 tapots. There's a reasonable chance one of them will be a good pourer.

D'oh! tEapots...

OK, you may distrust teapots in general, but surely the worst of the teapots is the "Little Metal Teapot" that features so prominently in road-side service stations and dodgy B & B's.

Picture the scene: (please excuse the excessive hyperbole - it's all for effect you know)

You've been driving for 88 days non stop. Your car smells like the inside of a Calcutta Sweatshop, your breath smells as if something has crawled down your throat and died, your teeth are furry, you've got travel sweets and melted chololate all over your clothes and your eyes look like p**s wholes in the snow.

Out of the corner of your eye you spy the Utopian sign that is "SERVICES 2 Miles". You think to yourself "Ah, Fresh Air and a nice cuppa would go down a treat".

After driving round the car park a dozen times trying to find a parking space, you eventually find one between two of the worst parked cars. The only way to get out of your car is by using the tin opener you for some reason insist on keeping the glove compartment, or out through the sunroof.

You inhale a lung full of Motorway fumes and revel in it's freshness.

Your legs have been in the same position for as long as you can remember and you appear to have lost the ability to walk. As the blood flows past your knee caps and into your lower legs you finally struggle towards the relic of post-war architecture that is The Blue Boar Service station.

You make a bee-line for the buffet: A pot of tea (large), an inedible sticky pastry thing that may or may not have lived once, and a cup and saucer decorate your tray.

An unintelligible drone of noise from a seemingly androgenous being demands £58.90 pence which you willingly pay up, without a question being asked.

You stagger towards a table, the only free one being covered in conjealed ketchup and cigarette butts that you brush aside. The chair is fixed to the ground 6 inches from the table so you don't really fit.

And now for the tea. The teapot is designed of super-conductive metal that heats up in an inverse proportion to the temperature of the tea therein. The kettle is measuring a staggering 286 Kelvin, the tea 45 Celius.

You pick up the kettle and put it down again, clutching your hand in agony. You realise that the only way you can pick it up again is by getting some napkins. you unwedge yourself from the table, get a handful of napkins and start again.

Success. You have the teapot in hand and your cup is ready. You forgot one thing ... you forgot to deactivate the forcefield that guards the cup from the tea. Tepid tea pours from the super-heated teapot - you curse, grab a handful of napkins only to discover that they don't absorb liquid ... and so it goes on ...

Eventually you leave the Blue Boar Service station unsatisfied but in the knowledge that you will be back and you will again forget the forcefield.

LOL, Ekki! I enjoyed that. And written with such passion, too. What's the Blue Boar ever done to you, eh?

Do I sense the bones of a Guide Entry here?