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

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. Not much in the way of springtime in a week which has been an endless succession of bitingly cold monochrome days where the roads are black and the fields are white and the wind sings over the snowdrifts. It is exactly a year this week since I posted my first "real" Epilogue on the Archers Web Site, and a lot has happened since then. 365 days.

Who would have thought, last year, when I typed those words about having sat on the roof of England, and about March coming in like a lion and going out like a lamb, that the government we elected with such high hopes for a better future in 1997 would, in a year from then, be conspiring to pass shoddy legislation to lock us all up without the benefit of a trial, on the say-so of a politician.

Still, what would Jesus do? Well, I guess he would carry on towards his inevitable conclusion. Winning by losing. Personally, I don't think Jesus is that bothered about Tony Blair, or any of the others for that matter. Render unto Caesar and all that.

Anyway, apart from the snow, which has, now, mercifully, all but gone, there hasn't been a lot to write about this week. Snow and adversity just about sums it up. There have been some good bits though. Russell continues his marvellous recovery. I keep trying to remember to thank Big G from time to time but as this week has been a succession of days when the prayer of the roundhead soldier in the English Civil War would not have seemed out of place, it's hard to remain as constantly thankful as I should be.

"Oh Lord, thou knowest how busy I must be this day: If I forget thee, forget thou not me".

As one of my more blasphemous associates once put it, "sudden prayers only startle God". I prefer to think that he/she/it knows how grateful I am, and that I have promised to mend my ways, and go to Santiago de Compostella and San Giovanni Rontondo, and to give any money from the book, if there ever is a book, to a good cause to do with relieving the suffering of animals, preferably one that actually needs the income. If God really does know all the innermost secrets of our hearts then he knows this too. In fact he knew before I did, which is a freaky thought.

The rest of the cats have been restive, like they can sense that Spring is coming and like me, they are frustrated by its slowness. Likewise Tig, who views the snow with the same degree of world weariness that I feel. Freddie, who was staying with us til Thursday, has a different attitude, running round in small circles and yapping at the snowflakes as they fall. It must be nice to have that much energy.

Otherwise, the week has been marked by normality. On Monday, the plumber didn't come On Tuesday, he phoned to say that he was just finishing off a little job in Mexborough. On Wednesday, he phoned to say he was snowed in. We never heard from him on Thursday or Friday. So everything in the kitchen sits in a state of suspended animation. Actually that is a kind way of putting it. Other descriptions include "thieves broke in and hoovered".

I got home on Wednesday to find that Deb had already started moving the kitchen units that are to go next door when Colin's plumbing is finally connected. One of them was upside down, minus its legs and with the doors facing the wall, not outwards into the kitchen as you might have expected. In response to my slightly raised eyebrows, she simply said "Yes, it's upside down. Deal with it, and move on." Obviously a bad day. I took her advice. I said no more. When I asked where the frying pan was she said "In the garage" - like I should have known.

Despite her struggles with Ikea MDF, I think actually Deb has been the happiest of all among us this week, mainly because she has now got her wireless connection set up for her laptop, and can sit downstairs by the fire, still surfing the internet. As she gleefully announced, I have now become a virtual husband and the only time she needs to see me in person or be in the same room, is when I cook her tea! I was struck by the irony of this. This was the woman who, when we first connected to the internet in 1997, denounced it as a "giant electronic anorak" and this week I found her wirelessly surfing for sites that allow you to buy ponchos online. If I cared to, I could work in some delicious irony at this point. Especially about the similarity of ponchos to anoraks.

Looking back over the week, at first, I was struck by how boring it was. A combination of work, snow, struggle, more work, and trivial domesticity. Yet this is life. Such things actually make up the days of our lives. "Some days are diamonds, and some days are stone", as Raymond Froggatt sings. Thing is, without the stones, you would never know that you had a diamond. And God knows before we do, which is which.

Tomorrow I have to go to Oxford for a meeting which I do annually, at about this time of year. Thursday is the annual bank meeting. Two days I can be pretty sure will be stone. But who knows? Days are where we live, and to answer the question of what days are, as Larkin says, brings the doctor and the priest running across the fields.

So folks, days are all we have, and some days the plumber won't turn up, and some days the kitchen cabinets will be upside down and legless, and some days, yea, even I will be upside down and legless, especially if Sainsbury's keep having special offers on Apprentice Sheep and Fuller's Winter Warmer. I will be lying under the table with the empty can of Special Brew, which in itself is a form of prayer, provided Big G looks down and shakes his head and says "I don't know" with an affectionate laugh about the fantastical tricks I get up to before high heaven.

And some days will go better than others. And some days will be difficult, with phone calls to make and favours to ask.

I had a conversation during the week with someone who said "why do bad things always happen to me" and I said at the time, I think you will find that good and bad thinks happen to all sorts of people, seemingly at random. If there is a pattern, maybe we are too near the weave to see it. But good things are just as likely as bad. The weaver has woven, but we can still alter the pattern as we go along. The tapestry is finished, but we still get to decide where the threads go. Or something like that.

We should make the best of our days, however stony. Summer's coming. The snows they melt the soonest, when the wind begins to sing. And so we, too, should sing, once more with feeling:

"I thank you for the days, those endless days you gave me. I'm thinking of the days, I won't forget a single day, believe me."