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

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley, but much of it has raged on around me, while I continued to be laid low by the foulest of bugs. Foolishly, last week, I thought I was on the mend and tried to get back to my desk too early: result, by Tuesday, I was not at my desk, but at the doctor's desk, watching her sign a prescription for anti-biotics following an emergency appointment. I managed briefly to visit my "office" office for about half an afternoon, before once more giving up and heading for home, and bed.

At some point on Wednesday, I became convinced that there was a large black squirrel on the roof, and that this was a bad omen. I began reciting George Herbert's "The Harbingers" to Deb, who was unimpressed by the drug-fuelled arguments I was putting forward.

The harbingers are come. See, see their mark;

White is their colour, and behold my head.

But must they have my brain? must they dispark

Those sparkling notions, which therein were bred?

Must dulnesse turn me to a clod?

Yet have they left me, Thou art still my God.

Once I was fully awake again, I could see that the squirrel (or at least what I took to be its nose) was, in reality, one of the brackets holding on the guttering outside the window.

Having weathered the squirrel crisis, I drifted off again, only to be wakened a couple of hours later by the sound of African harmonies and a choir singing "The Lord is My Shepherd". This time, I thought, they really are coming for me, but eventually I worked out what it was: Lockwood Cemetery, which is across the way from us, is a favourite burial place for the local West Indian community, and they must have been having one of their spectacular funerals that they hold from time to time: the angels I thought were coming for me, were actually the voices of the graveside choir, borne on the wind.

The animals continue to be bemused by my plight. Tig spends hours looking at me propped up in bed, just willing me to get up and open a packet of dogfood. She had an unexpected treat during the week when, in one of my shuffling and incoherent rambles downstairs, I noticed an opened packet of pressed ham in the fridge. Thinking that Debbie must've bought it as a treat for Tig, and feeling guilty that I had been neglecting her, I made her sit and give paw, while I fed her the remaining slices. Much licking of chops and tail-swishing ensued. Later, Debbie came into the bedroom: "Have you seen that ham my Mum left in our fridge for Jonathan's tea?" Tig and I shook heads simultaneously, and I pretended to be more delerious than I was.

Nigel, too, has been spending time with me, his favourite method of ensuring he has my attention being to claw the duvet next to my ear, having first watched me go to sleep. It's no fun if the subject's awake, apparently. With the advent of the frosty weather, I have banged the heating on in Colin's side of the house, which of course has had the result of luring Kitty and Dusty back to the bathroom, particularly Dusty, who has now been renamed "Bogpuss" by Debbie's mother, on account of her general size, shape, and continual inhabitation of that place. In fact, Dusty's life mostly consists of staying in the bathroom all the time with only brief forays outside to have a crap. Exactly the opposite of the way the majority of us do it!

Dusty virtually living in the bathroom full-time means of course that one now has to share one's, er, more intimate ablutions, motions and solutions, with an audience of not one, but sometimes two cats, watching intently. I fully expect them to start holding up scorecards one day, after the manner of Olympic judges.

Russell, virtual cat of I-church, went back for his check up appointment with the vet this week, and this was the crunch one: the vet was to weigh him, to see if he had gained or lost weight since last time - lost weight would indicate potential causes other than just his kidneys for his plight. In a week of struggle and disaster though, this was to be good news: he had actually put on a bit. Maybe, just maybe, we can start to be cautiously optimistic about the longer term. A soft day, thank God. Russell celebrated with some fish I managed to get up and cook for him. He also discovered the potential perils of a vegetarian diet when a large chunk of frozen veg curry in a freezer bag fell out of the top tray of the freezer and crashed onto the kitchen tiles just next to his head. Curiosity and cat's don't mix. One more life down, I think he's still got about four left though.

The only other "news" as such this week concerns the stove. We finally had to let it go out and clean the whole of it out, in an attempt to solve the firebrick problem. A trip over to Batley Braless resulted in Deb returning not only with a new set of firebricks, but also a new baffle-plate. The baffle plate sits over the top of the firebricks and holds them all in place, and our previous baffle-plate had burnt away, leading to the bricks collapsing and getting cracks in them. True to its name, the baffle-plate defeated Deb's attempts to fit it, and it was left to me to come down like a Deus Ex Machina and whack it with a poker until it slid into place.

As you can see, it has been a week which has been by turns aimless, feckless and witless, and I have got absolutely no work done. I have been trying to come to some decision about what spiritual lesson the week held for me, and the nearest I can come at the moment is that I have treated this week like a retreat. I have withdrawn from the real world and spent a long time looking and thinking. In that respect, maybe my head is better, even if my guts are worse. Lying in a sick bed and hearing the angels (or the squirrels) coming for you does tend to make you concentrate on the more fundamental questions: as does listening to the Remembrance Day parade here in the UK this morning. (Sadly, in bed, so no standing to attention with a cat on my shoulder this year.)

Retreat, of course, in military terms, can be synonymous with defeat, but it does not have to be. A retreat is different to a rout. Sometimes, as I hope I am doing, all you are achieving by retreating is to gather strength, hold the line, and consolidate your position in anticipation of a future advance. So, if I chose to momentarily forsake the external world of telegrams and anger, I should use that space to strengthen myself from within, and concentrate on what is important. "On a huge hill, cragg'd and steep, Truth stands, and he that will find it, about must, and about must go…"

Retreat can also be finding your way back to a place of safety, as in Henry Vaughan's "The Retreate"

HAPPY those early days, when I

Shin'd in my Angel-infancy!

Before I understood this place

Appointed for my second race,

Or taught my soul to fancy aught

But a white celestial thought:

When yet I had not walk'd above

A mile or two from my first Love,

And looking back—at that short space—

Could see a glimpse of His bright face:

When on some gilded cloud, or flow'r,

My gazing soul would dwell an hour.

Maybe my illness is big G telling me to slow down, and sniff the flowers.

At least one of the questions posed in last week's Epilogue got answered this week, about the succession of Yasser Arafat. Debbie came in and told me that the BBC late night news was reporting that all of the shops in the Gaza Strip were closed out of respect, apart from one which was selling Yasser Arafat "memorabilia."

"Yasser Arafat Memorabilia" just struck me as one of the more unlikely phrases, a bit like "German humorous literature", "Spanish animal rights protestors", "gourmet motorway services food", or possibly, "interesting Swedish furniture". I fell to musing what a collection of Yasser Arafat memorabilia would consist of. There's obviously a big market. I can just imagine men all over the world announcing they were going out to the shed to polish their Yasser Arafat memorabilia, and their wives handing them the teatowel with which to do it…

Sunday has been a quiet day so far, at which I have gradually picked at stuff on my desk. It's really tomorrow's problem, though. I have left undone those things which I ought to have done, and I have done those things which I ought not to have done, and there is no health in me. I am sorry I can't think of any more spiritual messages this week. However, it's probably just as well, we don't want people looking for hidden meanings in these rambling witterings and then going out and killing celebrities. [Though if you do feel the urge, could I suggest Celine Dion, Bono, Robbie Williams and any of Busted.]