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

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley, and one that has seen me laid low with the first really foul bug of 2004. The firebricks in the stove have partially collapsed, which means that a) we have to let it go out again and b) another trip to the Batley Braless Fire Company. No one has yet broken it to Nigel, Kitty, Dusty, Russell, or Tig that we will have to do with the ineffectual central heating until the firebricks can once more be screwed into place.

Work continues on books, on publicising books, and when we aren't doing either of the former, adding up the books - though not, yet, so far, cooking them. No stove anyway.

I managed to make it to the "office" office on Friday morning despite already feeling wretched. With the accent on the retch. My trouble is that simultaneously I hate being ill and will literally try to go on until I drop in my tracks, but at the same time, I am a terrific hypocondriac. I have had to stop watching medical programmes on TV because I immediately assume that I have got whatever it is that they are showcasing - from conjoined twins to ectopic pregnancy.

By mid afternoon Friday, I knew there was something seriously amiss in the alimentary dept, and bogarted some Kaolin and Morphine mixture off Phil - this got me to the stage where I felt able to drive home, and I staggered in at 4pm and settled myself by what was left of the stove (we'd already decided to let it go out) and dozed fitfully for two more hours before dragging myself bedwards.

Whatever it was peaked during Friday night, my temperature shot up, I was alternatively boiling and shivering, and somehow started thinking about what would happen to the business if I died. What would the succession be. Moose Face would be OK, because the extremely expensive Keyman insurance we pay Barclays for would kick in, and pay off any debts. She might have to go and get a real job once the ashes were settled and the dust was scattered, but that wouldn't hurt her. Then I started thinking (remember I was semi delerious at this time) about Guy Fawkes and his attempts to alter the succession, and about Yasser Arafat, and what it must have been like for him, lying there ill and hearing bangs going off all around him, just like I was, only his bangs were RPGs and tank shells. Then I started thinking about George Bush, and how unlikely it seemed that we had to suffer four more years of bangs going off all round, then back to Guy Fawkes, then back to Arafat, I tell you, that Kaolin and Morphine is strong stuff, man. I didn't see any giant pink spiders though.

At this point Deb put her head round the door to check on me.

"What do you think will happen when Arafat dies?" I croaked, weakly.

"His wife will finally be able to do the drying up". So much for the compassion of the caring professions.

Anyway, having slept (on and off) for 24 hours or more, and risen finally briefly last night, I seem to have burnt it out of me, whatever it was, and I feel much better. We have reached Sunday. St Willibrod's day, apparently, according to my dictionary of Saints. I need to go and look him up properly because all I really know about him at the moment is that he had a very silly name. Sunday: as Stanford would say, and Katherine Ferrier is currently singing about on the CD as I type this - "A soft day, at last, thank God"

While I was lying ill, Tig and Nigel both joined me on the bed, so every time I came out of my reverie I saw two glittering gold eyes and two sad brown ones anxiously fixed on me, no doubt wondering if I would survive ever to open another tin. Russell studiously ignored me, but he's got illness problems of his own, so I will let him off.

Anyway, last night the only thing I had the intellectual chutzpah for was watching the John Peel tribute on the Beeb. Lots of clips of groups (Medicine Head) that I had forgotten I had ever heard, let alone liked. It almost made me want to pick up a guitar again, or get my old Banjo out.

In the years when I lived alone in Barnsley, I used to play the banjo a great deal more than I do today. It's not a social instrument: in fact I once got rid of some double glazing salesmen by getting out the banjo and starting to double thumb frail "Little Birdie" in a lilting appalachian yodel. Nigel, who never shows any reaction to human music, (apart from for some strange reason best known only to him, Tanita Tikaram - perhaps she hits notes only cats can hear) was always strangely enervated by the banjo and tried to get between me and it, either because he thought I was having sex with it and wanted to join in, or he thought I was fighting it and he was trying to save me, or he recognised some of his relatives in the strings and wanted to effect a reunion beyond the grave.

I don't know what will happen about John Peel's succession, but here's an idea from the Slightly Foxed Bank of Good Ideas (the people who brought you cockney assonance slang: apples and pears = fears) that the BBC should institute John Peel memorial sessions for new bands.

They are all going, this year, all the old touchstones - John Peel, Alistair Cooke, and even Fred Dibnah. I will miss Fred Dibnah, especially because he tried to reconstruct a fully working Victorian mine-shaft in his garden in Bolton. Well, someone's got to do something about property prices rising out of control.

John Peel actually called us once on the phone, in person. It was when he was in The Archers, as a walk-on part, playing himself. I wrote a stupid little letter to the Guardian saying that the credibility of the real characters in the Archers was being undermined by imaginary people like John Peel appearing in it. It must have been a slow news day because the Guardian printed it, and in those days, the Guardian had a policy of printing the full name and address under letters and Peel must've looked up our number in directory enquiries, he rang to berate us - albeit in a friendly way - for referring to him as "imaginary".

I was pretty overawed - after all, this was the bloke I had listened to on a whistly transistor as a 15 year old in Hull, trying to be blacker, older, and more like Howlin' Wolf than any of my contemporaries.

Looking at him on the TV programme last night, I was very jealous of his lifestyle - nice house, garden, cats and dogs wandering about, big farmhouse kitchen, big table to sit around having breakfast, or dinner, red wine a-plenty. The only downside - for me at any rate - would be the bin-bags of stuff which arrived every day, containing tapes and CDs from aspiring musicians. As a recipient of unsolicited manuscripts, I can sympathise. I was a free man in Paris, nobody calling me up for favours, no one's future to decide.

I am not one of those people who goes all "Candle in the Wind" whenever a celebrity dies, and I don't think that John Peel was God.

I do, however, think that God, if he exists as a sentient force or being, is probably a lot like John Peel. Bumbling, curmudgeonly, occasionally forgetful, loving of his family, occasionally disappointed, but always willing to give something new a try, and speaking directly to people who are tuned in. Sifting through the bin bags of our offerings and alternately smiling and crying at their contents, as he takes upon himself all the sins of the world.