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

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley, and a wintry one. Still no signs of spring, and as I sit here typing this, the cold is so biting that here in the office, despite Colin's central heating going full blast AND the halogen heater next to my chair, I can still see my breath every time I breathe out. I am wearing a poncho with a hood, and I look, and feel, like Clint Eastwood's grandad today. The animals are all seeking the warmest places: Russell, whose miraculous recovery continues, thank God, is curled up in the chair next to the stove, having demolished yet another plate of "Beef and Liver" dog food. Tig's on her settee, with her nose in her tail. Kitty on the settee in the corner of the music room, curled round so tight that you can't really tell which end is which. Dusty is burrowing into the duvet on our bed and until very recently, Nigel was perched on the desk next to the nice warm laser printer.

Freddie returned home on Friday night, when Granny came back from baby-viewing in Southampton. I was deputed to turn out and pick her up from Wakefield westgate station on Friday night. Freddie barked his head off when he saw her, and then fastened himself, limpet-like, to her bosom, all the way home, except for a brief interlude where we met up with one of Becky's ebay purchases, in the form of a baby toy mobile thing, in the Co-op car park at Ossett on the way back. The scene was redolent of some underhand, criminal activity, meeting up in a deserted car park, but persuading the guy to turn out and hand it over in person to her mum saved Becky eight pounds in postage, and probably cost as much in diesel. And it was an experience, I thought, as I threaded my way back through Horbury, with a silent nod towards whoever it was who said you should try and experience everything in life except incest and Morris-dancing.

Debbie is downstairs shifting things in preparation for the descent of the plumber who is arriving next week like a deus ex machina to fix the shower and install a downstairs loo in what used to be Colin's pantry, including stud wall and all necessary plastering, according to his estimate. Let's hope he's used to working in sub-zero temperatures.

For this week has been the week of the snow, and it looks like next week will be as well, the way things are going. I have a special antipathy towards snow. And it doesn't like me much either. I don't even think it's particularly beautiful. It's just cold, obstructive, disruptive and slippery. So my heart sank on Thursday when I saw the state of the driveway. Kettles of hot water, some rock salt, and a brisk session with the yardbrush were enough to make a sort of pathway from the door to the car. The road outside our drive was clear, deceptively so, as I was to discover. By the time I got to Brockholes, the road, which is the main A616, was white over, and I was beginning to question the wisdom of having set out. The snow warning signs at the side of the road were telling me helpfully that Buckstones and the Snake Pass were both closed, not that I was planning to go there anyway, but clearly things were much worse than I had thought.

Out of New Mill, there are two choices, either up Sally Wood or over Stocksbridge, which involves tacking the Stocksbridge by-pass, one of the most dangerous roads in England at the best of times, and this definitely wasn't the best of times. Fortunately, just as I was dithering, a huge tipper truck started lumbering up Sally Wood, scattering snow as it went, so I gratefully dropped into his wheel tracks and followed him all the way to the top. It was almost like having my own private snow-plough. And so I made it, eventually, to my other desk, an hour late.

By the time I set off to come back, that evening, a lot of the snow had turned to slush. I was feeling pretty confident that I would get back OK, and had got as far as Darfield on the A635 when a Ford Focus pulled out straight in front of me, from Nanny Marr Road, a side-street whose chief claim to fame up to that point had been having a mildly amusing name. I hit the horn and the brakes simultaneously. He accelerated out of the way, my front wheels locked, there was a dizzying moment of screeching and I spun through 180 degrees, ending up wedged across the mouth of Nanny Marr Lane, facing back the way I had been coming from. Mercifully, there was no other traffic about.

A friend of mine told me recently that she had had a nightmare where she felt like a helpless little child, and all she could do was repeat that she was frightened over and over again, in French for some reason (such is the logic of dreams: I once dreamt that I had invented a triangular web site that could be projected onto the back of doors - why?) J'ai peur. And it was with a very similar feeling that I drove gingerly the remainder of the way home. J'ai peur. Or, as Leo Kottke sang:

"Sometimes I feel like a tiny island

Floating in the sea"

What lesson was I supposed to derive from the experience? Like Eliot, I had the experience, but missed the meaning. On the one hand, it was a demonstration of how, even in the 21st century, our sophisticated transport is still at the mercy of natural conditions. On the other, it was a further graphic illustration of the idea of what might have been. In another dimension, perhaps, I ended up as kebab meat, and my car a shattered wreck. Or was the crucial point that I had been saved - someone watching over me to ensure that there wouldn't be another vehicle in the wrong place at the wrong time? But then why give me the experience anyway, if Big G knew I would get through it OK? Unless it was to set me thinking, which it certainly did.

I could say that the true nature of courage in the face of adversity is to go out there and do it again, whatever "it" is, even though you are afraid. Even though inwardly, you are saying "J'ai peur". Well, I certainly was. But
I don't think I am particularly courageous. More so on some things than otrhers, perhaps. Maybe another, worse skid is coming, where I can put into practice what I learned in that first skid, and save someone's life.

Everything comes down to whether you think life has a purpose, a meaning, or whether you think things just happen at random, with no pattern, no design. As I have said before, there is no absolute proof to be had. Ultimately, everything is a matter of faith.

So I go into next week having faith that things will get better. Faith that the snow will melt, and the crocuses finally show through in the garden. I have been putting the SPB Mais book to bed this week, and reading about how his writings helped popularise the countryside and encouraged people in the 1930s to go out on countryside rambles, a movement that eventually led to the mass trespass on Kinder Scout and the establishment of the Peak District National Park. To get myself in the mood, I have been playing The Manchester Rambler, by Ewan MacColl:

"The moorland has oft been my pillow

The heather has oft been my bed

And sooner than part from the mountains

I think I would rather be dead"

And I found myself getting Lake District withdrawal symptoms. Maybe a trip in the near future to see my good friend Dr Keswick will set me right again, and give me a bit of direction and certainty, two remedies for life's little buffets which I am definitely lacking at the moment. There is much to be done, and people are relying on me to do it, so it's time to snap out of it and set to work with a will, even though "J'ai peur" sometimes. I may be a wage-slave on Mondays, but I am a free man on Sundays, like the song says.

So another week passes, another month passes, and this week, like last week, I have more questions than answers. Teach us to care and not to care: teach us to sit still. Teach us to think about what might have been but not to be paralysed by it. Help us to go out there again and face our dragons, especially when nous avons peur. In the words of Karine Polwart's song

"Oh, oh, the night is long

But life is longer still …

Oh, oh, the night is long,

But the sun's comin' over the hill"




Hang on in there folks: Spring is coming...