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

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. There are daffodils out in Colin's garden, which means there are presumably also daffodils out in flower on his grave, too, across the way in Lockwood cemetery, as Halina planted them there in 2000. Not that I have been able to get over to see them. There are probably daffodils in the Lake District, too, nodding and dancing in the breeze, not that I have been able to get to see them, either, yet, this year. And for all that, it's still not officially spring, unless the crocus phase was so fleeting that I missed them. Fair crocuses we weep to see, ye haste away so soon.

This week has been dominated, latterly at any rate, by computer problems, first the big Epson printer deciding to keep up its convincing impersonation of a white elephant by getting a self-adhesive - and allegedly laser-compatible - sticky label caught inside it and runing a transfer belt which cost £182.77. Then finally my computer, the server for the whole system, caught a bug from which it has still not fully recovered.

The animals, of course, are oblivious to all of this. Both Dusty and Russell view laser printers simply as another form of heated cat-bed. Dusty also managed to jump into an A4 box of receipts which I had collected together ready to write them all up for the VAT return, and scattered them to all points of the compass. So much for trial balance. Kitty has made a nest in the plumber's donkey jacket, which he very unwisely left in the building site that is Colin's kitchen over the weekend. Nigel is losing his winter coat, or to be more accurate, redistributing it to each according to his needs. Unfortunately his assessment of our continuing requirement for cat fur differs from ours, hence the whine of the Dyson has been once more echoing through the house several times a day.

Tig has been watching the misdeeds of her various "puppies" - which is how she seems to see them - with a world-weary sigh as she settles down on her sofa, soon transporting herself to the land of doggy dreams where her paws and nose twitch as she chases imaginary sheep and rabbits (both of which terrify her in real life).

This week also marked the resumption of Russel's monthly visits to the vet. Happily, the remarkable recovery continues and he's now back up to 2.7KG, only 200g off what he was when he had his last "do". A living testimony to the power of prayer. He came back on Wednesday and celebrated by demolishing yet another plate of his favourite dog/cat food.

I decided on more traitional fare. West Country Cheddar, fierce English mustard, a couple of hunks of fresh bread spread with real butter, not margarine, even though my cholesterol is 6.5, and a smattering of pickled shallots. Have you ever noticed, by the way, that "shallots" is almost an anagram of "halitosis". Are these facts connected? A ploughman's lunch, in fact, even though it was Wednesday teatime, and the only real ploughman that I know, James Hewison, always had ham sandwiches.

I mused on what SPB Mais wrote about a character in one of his novels:

"When a publican unexpectedly asked if he 'could do with a bit of cheese and pickled onion' he was moved to tears and commented bitterly, 'this is coming near to being the most poignant question in the language'.

I wouldn't necessarily go that far, but for all its made-up-merrie-Englandness, the plangent taste of a tangy cheddar and a really good pickled onion is one of the more defining experiences of life. I accompanied my repast with two cans of Adnams' Southwold Special Bitter (on which they very helpfully print a picture of the Southwold Sole Bay lighthouse and give the frequency of its flashes, so that if you do ever find yourself becalmed off Southwold with a can of Adbams to hand, you know what to look for.) Even though you can taste the salty swoosh of the North sea and sniff the ozone in every mouthful of the beer, overall, I always feel there's something essentially "West Country" about bread and cheese - not just the Cheddar of course. It always brings to mind that wonderful line in the traditional song "Tavistock Goosey Fair" by the famous composer, Trad, Anon.

"Us smelt that sage and onion half a mile from Whitchurch Down"

There is more English social history in that one line than in any ten pages of Trevelyan.

Mention of Southwold always reminds me as well, of the time my father bought a copy of the 1972 edition of "Reid's Nautical Almanac" at a jumble sale. I still have it, somewhere, even though there isn't much call for maritime skills in Huddersfield, where you can usually see from one bank of the canal to the other, unless it's an exceptionally smoggy day. I don't know what prompted my Dad to buy it either. His cheif connection with the sea was to sit on Brough Haven watching the tankers, barges, and yachts go by, along the Humber. His grandfather was another matter, having died at sea on his trawler and having been buried in a canvas shroud off the coast of Morocco. Full fathom five and all that: of his bones are corals made.

Anyway, I was browsing through "Reid's Nautical Almanac" one day and became fascinated by the section that breaks up the coastline of Britain into manageable navigable chunks, a bit like the Radio 4 Shipping Forecast. Especially amusing is the section marked "Bloody Point to Ipswich". I imagined generations of "Yotties", adrift in the fog in the Orwell Estuary, sailing in close to land, close enough to should to a gnarled and wizened yokel on the shore: "Excuse me! Bloody Point to Ipswich?" At which, no doubt, said yoke, startled by so direct a request, would shoot out a bony finger and reply, "'Tes that way, Zur!"

But I digress. Oh yes, ploughman's lunches and Englishness. Something I have dealt with before. It's coming round to that time of the year when the Englishness in me asserts itself again. There is other English food of course. As Jeanette Winterson remarked, Oranges are not the only fruit. Fish and chips is one of the things I miss most about being vegetarian. When Maisie started teaching at Barnsley College, having moved up to Yorkshire from the exotic hinterland of Balham, she was cajoled into taking part in the lunchtime fish and chips run to Grimethorpe Chippy.

Thus it was that she found herself at the head of a queue of hungry Yorkshire folk on their dinner hour, and pronounced her order in those immaculate cut-glass, RP English vowels for which she is celebrated. " Oppen or Wrapped?" replied the fishmonger. Maisie, who had no idea at the time that you could specify whether you wanted your fish and chips left open to eat now, or wrapped to keep them warm until you could consume them later, couldn't understand a word that he was saying, and decided, on the face of it, that the best thing to do was to just smile sweetly, and repeat her order again.

"Aye. Oppen or wrapped?" Eventually, someone from behind her in the queue interpreted, and there wasn't a riot.

There wasn't a riot. In common with many other times in our history. So where is all this leading, now it's got to Sunday and I am sitting here, waiting for the computer to finish its weekly virus scan and staring at a half-written poem on the back of an envelope that contained the bank statement when it arrived two days ago, but which now, inexplicably, no longer seems to do so (how symptomatic of my whole life that is!) It's Palm Sunday as well, and I haven't mentioned palms, or donkeys. Apart from those in jackets.

Well, if I did have a message for Palm Sunday I guess it would be about mob mentality. How the same mob that welcomed Jesus turned on him a few days later. And how the concept of Englishness - or at least my idea of it - of an outlook on life that sees value in bread and cheese for all, in the whiff of sage and onion from a country fair, in hapless maritime expoints and self-deprecation, above all, an innate reasonableness, tends against the coming of the mob here. That's not to say we haven't had our mobs. From Peterloo to the Countryside Alliance; from the miners at Tonypandy or Orgreave, to the Poll Tax Riots. We've also had millions marching peacefully, to demonstrate against war.

We are currently entering a period when it seems to me here in England that politicians of all parties here are attempting to stir up mob mentality in a quite disgusting way to further their own ends in the forthcoming election, and it behoves us very well, in my opinion, to remember the more reasonable sides of our nature, and not be swayed by these shameful, scapegoating tactics. Their England is an England of twitching curtains, mean-spiritedness, turned backs, closed doors and "Shop-thy-neighbour". And some of them have the sheer brass neck to claim to speak for traditional British values.

It may be a grotesque image, and I am not wanting to negate the central event of many people's faith, but I would like to think that our response to meeting Christ (and all the poor, the marginalised, the spat-upon vagabonds he stands for) as he staggers along the Via Dolorosa, should be to take that heavy cross off him, sit him down, and offer him a cup of tea and a cat to stroke. And a hunk of bread and cheese, with perhaps a pickled shallot and a pint of Adnams' best. And some fish and chips. Oppen or wrapped.