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

>>As I may have mentioned earlier, anything with the word United in it's name, isn't.<<

What about United Buscuits then? Surely you'd just be buying packets of crumbs, and how would you dunk that?

But bearing what you say in mind, i might think twice now before flying United Airlines...

Quality of life in the Loonytunes department of h2g2 has improved immeasurably since we took on a new member of staff to assist my teasmaid Titania in her duties. Not that Titania has in any way been inadequate. Far from it. She has performed to perfection her task of keeping me supplied with cups of the finest Ceylon tea. Her responsibility, however, has never stretched beyond tea and the occasional coffee. For many years now I have felt the need for a little more during my beverage breaks - and that is where Linus fits in.

I first met Linus when he was attached to my department as part of his Indolence Experience, and I quickly identified in him a very rare talent indeed. Linus is, quite simply, the best natural biscuit dunker I have ever encountered. Give him a Rich Tea, Petit Beurre or even a Chocolate Digestive or Ginger Nut to go with a hot beverage and he will demonstrate an uncanny sense of precisely how long the biscuit may be left in the drink before it runs the risk of disintegrating and depositing a soggy portion of itself in the cup. I could only watch in admiration as he held the biscuit on outstretched fingers, assessing its weight and texture, then let his hand hover for an instant above the cup to gauge the temperature of the drink, before gripping the biscuit firmly, submerging it in the liquid, and finally taking it out confidently and lifting it, deliciously infused with tea, to his mouth. Or, now that he has been given a staff position, my mouth.

I thought at first that he must have studied under Dr Len Fisher, the Nottingham academic who was the first to write a paper on The Physics of Biscuit Dunking. Yet when I attempted to discover Linus' views on the effect of moisture on the rheological properties, particularly the apparent biaxial extensional viscosity, of biscuit dough, his reply ("I just dunk 'em and eat 'em") left me in no doubt that his talent was innate rather than academically acquired. This pleased me, for I have never shared Fisher's preference for wide-brimmed cups and milk-based drinks for dunking.

Nothing, in my opinion, beats a Rich Tea dipped skilfully into Broken Orange Pekoe in a modestly brimmed bone china cup. And I know ILinus shares my opinion on that matter. It was one of the first things I asked him at his interview. As I sit here, enjoying the sensuous pleasure of pressing a perfectly dunked biscuit between my tongue and upper palate, I appreciate, however, that natural talent is not enough. As Linus would be the first to admit, his own skill with biscuits, remarkable though it was even without any training, owes everything to his studies with the great French biscuitères at the Light Snacks and Refreshments Department of the Gastronomic University of Dunkirk.

In, two, three, four, out. Not a crumb in the tea, and the biscuit gently wilting. Another perfect dunk, young man, if you'll excuse me for speaking with my mouth full.

So are the United States of LÒÒnytunes a democratic intitution, or do dunker, drinker and dealer know their place in the social order?

And when you interviewed, how and where did you advertise for such a talent?

We all get back to nature at the Hokitika wild food festival...

Here I am in the Express Yourself Cafe in Linga Longa Cottage, drinking good coffee made by two nice country women. They are frying bacon and eggs that hiss and pop and smell delicious. The wide main street of Darfield is busy for so early in the day. Twenty thousand of us are on our way to Hokitika for the Wildfoods Festival and soon I'm on the road, too. The cloud over Christchurch city breaks up in the foothills and vanishes in the mountains. The sun turns the tussock beside Lake Grasmere gold, picks out the twisty rocks of Castle Hill and the bright red rim of rata at the snowline, if there'd been any snow. We race up the wide straight roads, grunt up Porters Pass into the Alps, weave through the brown basins below the peaks, cross the long one-way Bealey bridge, snake through the bush to Arthur's Pass and dive off Peg Leg onto the new viaduct that flies through the air above the black Otira. Then we're on the West Coast, where the rimu is languid in the bright blue day.

Hokitika is the best town on the West Coast, although I've been flayed for saying less. The Wildfoods Festival started a decade ago with only a couple of thousand bowling along, but now it's a fixed date in the diary. The housetrucks get there first and pinch the best spot at the end of the beach where they can look through their stained glass windows at the Tasman Sea on one side and the harbour on the other. The only signs of the busy old port now are the remains of a wharf and some bollards. Knot's Nook, genuine gypsy home, is open housetruck at $2 a throw. Then the campervans, now the tents, utes, sheets of plastic or a chunk of ground that, if no one else spots it, you can call your own. Right along the beach from the rivermouth to the edge of town every space is taken. The westerly gales that trim the coastal bush to short back and sides have vanished this early autumn day and the Tasman laps as beautifully on the beach as the Med. The ginger plant smells like honey.

Everyone who has something to sell is in Hokitika today. Every bonecarver, stone sculptor, woodworker, jade engraver, adzer, toymaker, potter, tinker, tailor, rag-and-bone man, astrologer, palm-reader, possum-skin milliner, mystic, flute player and drummer who ever got away from it all on the West Coast is here to peddle something and if you know any Bob Dylan, there's a stage here with your name on it. You want a kete [basket/kit] for your cigarette lighter? Hoki's your place. Or a whip-holder carved in totara. "Last a lifetime mate," says the man. Or a huge boulder of greenstone, whose polished surfaces feel like flesh and blood.

So I trundle past Porky's Fast Food, pay the $15, nip into one of the big marquees, quell the shudders and down a huhu grub. It is a fat thing, about half the length of my finger, made up of a lot of round rings like the Michelin man. it tastes nutty, and squishy. I give the muttonbirds a miss, likewise the wild West Coast mushrooms and the wacky mousse and grab a worm slammer, worm pickled in vodka and served with moonshine. The booze is so strong you don't notice the worm, which looks like a garden one. Then I toss back a broom-flower wine (you start with a bucket of flowers and a bucket of water, says the vintner), try a bit of stinging-nettle soup, which is only okay, and down an octopus patty with a kina [seaegg] slammer while the Kokatahi Band belts out the Maori Battalion marching song.

Then I have a crack at the West Coast oysters and sweetmeats. They come in little paper bowls, testicles in one, brains in the other. Sally and I have a little tussle that resolves itself like this: she has the balls and I have the brains. Hers are delicious, mine chewy.

I have no room left for snails, or the pickled ponga [fern], or the green spaghnum moss floss or even the wild passion schnapps or the gin traps (God knows). But the wasp caviar sounds like getting your own back. It turns out to be wasp larvae served on polenta with balsamic vinegar. Yep, maggots on toast. It was a grub too far.

I regret to report that on the banks of a stream whose clear water and bushy banks probably supplied half the menu, the wasp larvae led the charge of viscera, flora, fauna and genitalia back to the wild.