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

Some of you might remember me talking about the time, when I used to deliver magazines at night in London, that I went to bed in the dark one winter's morning when the clock said 7.00, and woke up in the dark with the clock showing 5.00, and spent ten minutes trying to figure out I'd slept for minus two hours, when in fact I'd slept right through the daylight hours and it was actually 5pm, not 5am.

Something similar happened last night.

I lay down on the sofa around 10.30pm to listen to Stephen Fry Reading a Harry Potter Book. I fell asleep, as I almost always do on the sofa if I close my eyes. Next thing I know I've woken with a start and everything is pitch black and silent. I'm quite used to waking up after kipping on the sofa for a few hours, but obviously the lights are still on, usually.

I had to feel around to figure out where I was because I couldn't see anything and I wasn't sure, at first, whether I'd woken up in bed or on the sofa. On the sofa... okay, why is it all so dark and so quiet, and how am I going to get up and move around without light? And what the winky wanky woo is going on?

What had happened, obviously, was that the leccy had gone off. Not just in Castle Gosho, but the entire complex, or at least all of it I can see from here. Maybe beyond too. I fumbled around on the table for the cellphone - 11.30pm. Stumbled into the kitchen to get the little torch I keep in the pantry (my eyes can no longer see very far into it without help), went around turning off anything I knew was switched on in case the power came back on in the night, poured myself a glass of whisky, grabbed the mp3 player I like listening to the wireless in bed) and went to bed for a bit of a read, by which time it was about midnight.

About 20 minutes later I heard the downstairs neighbour's heater going and figured the power was back on, which indeed it was.

You were actually abducted by . You were gone for a year. It's now 2015. They implanted a few bad memories of 2014 to confuse you and hide any unpleasant memories you may have had from your time in captivity.

Oh my goodness And yet it all seems so real. I suppose it's for the best that a year which was so bloody awful turns out to be false memories and didn't really happen at all

It's nice to be back, by the way