166

In this posting...
*the Ultimate Answer to the One Big Question
*Anne Jones
*AGM VII
Read on...

I hope you’re ready for this. I hope you’ve fortified your physical and mental wherewithal (what an awesome word: wherewithal) in order to cope with the truly startling revelation that’s coming you way hereinunder. (Wow: hereinunder.) If you haven’t, or if you wish to augment your mental underpinning even more, please do so now.

Do whatever you think is necessary to enable you to sustain what is bound to be something of a shock to the system. Because I am about to undermine a belief - nay, an article of faith - adhered to by many millions of people all over the world; a veritable fulcrum around which countless numbers have constructed whole philosophies.

What I am about to reveal to you will, at the very least, make your jaw drop and your eyes open wide in amazement and wonder. At most, it will change your outlook on the world - and everything that’s in it - for ever and irrevocably. It’s quite possible that nothing - absolutely nothing - will ever be quite the same again. That’s how earth-shattering this revelation is going to be.

Which is why I said, up there at the top, that I hoped you were ready for it.

(If, incidentally, you’re not ready for it, stop reading this blogposting now. I’m serious. If anything below applies to you:
- you’re of a nervous disposition;
- you’re in any way unstable, unpredictable or socially volatile;
- you habitually take mind-enhancing drugs like paracetamol or ibuprofen;
- you live in Sunderland;
- you watch Strictly Come Dancing...
then skip the revelation and go straight on down to Anne Jones (as it were)).

So here we go then. Ready? Sure? OK - on your own head be it. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

I can now reveal - for the first time and exclusively on this truckshunting blog, that Douglas Adams (and therefore, by default, Stephen Fry) was wrong. The Answer to the Question of Life, the Universe and Everything is not forty-two.

Yes, I know. In its own way, this information is startling enough to make you want to go to bed whatever time of day it is. But there’s more.

Not only am I able to reveal the error of the ways of Messrs Adams and Fry. Presenting you with purely negative news is, after all, so...negative. So (and this is the real story) I am also in the epoch-making position of being able to reveal to you what the Answer to the Question of Life, the Universe and Everything actually is.

No, it’s not forty-two.

It’s forty-five.

Like all mind-boggling revelations, this one will have struck you immediately as accurate, pertinent and life-affirming. Suddenly, all has been revealed, has it not? I, for one, always felt a little uneasy at the thought that forty-two was being promulgated as the Ultimate Answer. It just didn’t seem right to me. Forty-two? Surely not. It just didn’t conform to my life-experience or to my sense of a puzzle satisfyingly and conclusively answered. Especially as Life, the Universe and Everything is the greatest puzzle conceivable in the Mind of Man.

Forty-five, though, is a different kettle of fish altogether. Just think about it. Forty-five. Doesn’t it have the ring of incontrovertible and unarguable truth about it? Forty-five.

However, in the unlikely event that you’re not convinced of the wholesome truth of the matter, I offer above The Magic Square of 45, devised - with almost mystical and guruesque brilliance - by truckshunter Kev. Put aside any sudoku tendencies you might be air to and study The Magic Square of 45. Look at it. Ponder it. Configure it in your mind. Whatever you contrive to refute the theory, the Answer remains the same.

Forty-five.

ANNE JONES
In an email to me, redoubtable truckshunter Alison Best mentioned her sister Anne, the World Speed-Reading Champion, who ‘may be in the news this week with the new Dan Brown book. She has been invited down to London by Border Books to attempt a new record reading the Lost Symbol....’

And guess what? ‘She did it! She read the book in 41 minutes and has massively beaten her own world record. I am so proud of her!’ And so say all of us, Alison. Well done, Anne.

AGM VII
Yes, I know I haven’t yet given my usual report of AGM VI at Tynemouth Station Market, but I will. I promise. In the meantime, however, I’m delighted to say that arrangements for the next one have been taken out of my hands completely, thanks to the Birkheads Ad Hoc Committee. It will take place next Wednesday 30 September at 1100 in the cafe at Saltwell Towers, which is in Saltwell Park, Gateshead. A splendid time is guaranteed for all...

AND FINALLY...
News of an event which you may have missed. This from The Guardian’s ‘Northerner’ email: ‘My pick of the Bank Holiday events is the Third Annual Lancashire Gravy Wrestling Championships at the Rose and Bowl pub in Stacksteads, Rossendale.’

Gravy wrestling. Yummy. I urge everyone to find out when the Fourth Championships are next year. I think we should go, don’t you?

CONTACT ME
Post comments on this blog or email me: truckshunters@googlemail.com