"What's gold carrots taste like," he asked, with an air of innocence that made you think of him as a completely dim twat. Which was fair enough, the gold-diggers supposed. They answered mainly with unintellible answers, except one big bloke who answered by moving his fist remarkably fast into Ian's head.

Ian thought this was a bit unfair, at least he did after he regained consciousness about two hours later, but was undeterred, and went for his second question - now he was in for the killer question:

"Where is the hut in which you dwell?" He asked this one in good English, in case this was what has upset the big bloke last time, but the big bloke wasn't there, so he needn't have bothered. The group of diggers nearby just laughed at him for a while, and then they stopped. And then they just had to start laughing again, because they were all rather sad, and weren't used to jokes, especially not 6'5'' jokes like Ian.

Eventually, they could contain themselves no longer, which was a great pity, because it made a real mess of the floor. They settled down, calmed themselves, counted to ten, shouted "Osmosis" cause they enjoyed doing that, and almost made a hole in the ceiling by mistake. And then explained that 'The Hut' was a pub which they all went to even though it was as far away from the gold mine as possible without actually being in a different county.

So that was that, Ian had finally come up trumps, and figured out part of his puzzle, and was so happy that he had to jump up and down and do cartwheels, which was silly cos he couldn't do cartwheels, so kept falling over and landing on his head, which hurt, but then he was a particularly silly bloke.

So soon he was back on the road, in search of The Hut. And soon after that, he was very nearly run over by a bus, so he changed his mind and stood on the pavement. Whether this new mind would be of any use to him, he couldn't work out, so he continued on his journey.