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

i was sitting in Debenhams, eating a muffin, and my phone began to ring. It said "Tim Home" (as in Tim's Home phone, not someone called tim with the surname "Home"). I answered.

Me: Hello, Tim
Tim: Hi, What are you doing?
Me: eating a muffin
Tim: NO, I meant generally- are you looking for a job, still in sunderland, all that
Me: Oh, well...
Tim: what flavour muffin?

Surreal...

I don't get it?

Blueberry ?

Oh, I get it now!!! As opposed to bran!! Hilarious.

'twas not blueberry, no. I do normally eat blueberry muffins in Debenhams, so it was a good guess, but on this occassion I tried something different.

I had a bananna bran muffin yesterday, it was horrible. Only the swimming pool sized cappuccino and weekend paper I had with it let me survive. I actually had a thought as I bought it that I didn't realise banannas *had* bran until I realised it was just a bran muffin with bananna bits tossed in. How on earth did they manage to make it so dry with bananna in it?

Anyway, end the suspense. Ease the barbless hooks out of our mouths. Reveal lack of height to the high wire. Tell us there are airbags in this car. Pay the ransom.

What kind of muffin was it, why should we care, and how was it remotely funny?

? You don't appreciate the zen of the telephone conversation ? The inference that in reality the caller has realised that the flavour of muffin Egon is eating is more interesting than what is happening in his life ?

I suspect he has gone for double chocolate, and it is guilt that is preventing him from revealing it.

Oh, well, you see I felt that the *Zen* moment was ruined by the *Oh, well..* comment by Egon which indicated to the caller that his life was an empty, meaningless desert of missed opportunities and broken promises. Obviously by asking about the flavour of the muffin the caller was defusing an otherwise embarassing situation in which Egon might possibly begin a string of mind numbing comments about the emptiness of life and the bleak, unforgiving nature of the universe.

No?

That is possible too, but Egon brings us this conversation, has he realised what he reveals to us ?

Even his desire to distance himself from the Tory party by making it clear he doesn't have a friend who may be related to a former prime-minister, reveals much.

We see the bleakness of his life in what he attempts to pass as a non-sequiter.

Are you implying that *Tim Home* refers to the Home Office? Or that the blandness of the conversation may hint at a greater blandness of his life and in sharp contrast to his friends' lives? Is the muffin a muffin metaphor with the *flavour* an oblique reference to the very flavour of life, variety? Are we talking here of a one-trick pony, a vanilla life, a bran existence?

Quite probably, but the Home reference is Sir Alec Douglas Home.

Possibly a plain muffin ? That didn't rise properly, and is stuck to its paper casing.

Ahhh. S.A.D. Home and Tim Home. I see.

Should we consider tarts?

btw, a search of the store database reveals only
*Jane Asher, 12 cup muffin tin, £8.00*
under *muffins*.

Hmmmmm.

What a shame. I didn't know Jane had a tin Muffin. she bears it well.

12 cups as well! That's huge!

Well, she's a bountiful lady

The muffin in questionm was belgian Chocolate Chunk.

That's Belgian Chocolate Chunk.

Make of that what you will...

Perhaps the banana muffin was made with dried banana.