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

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. And a frustrating one. I don't know about careless rapture, but I could tell you a lot about car-less rapture, after the garage took a week to replace the cracked cylinder head and rebuild the engine from the bottom up, fixing two oil leaks along the way. During that time the long-suffering Phillip very kindly got up very early and came and fetched me so I could get to the warehouse and my other office, every day. And delivered me home again in the evening. We've added another 250 miles to the van's odometer doing it though, and despite his kindness, by the end of the week I felt a bit like a parcel. All I needed was a label saying "not wanted on voyage".

Travelling with Phil has led to some strange journeys. I am used to having that hour-to-ninety-minutes journey alone, and ruminating during the enforced silence. With Phil, we had conversations. This showed up just how dull my wits are in the morning. We were listening to the news item about the scientists who have decided that only certain people are susceptible to mosquito bites and how it's a question of body odour. I was telling Phil that if that was the case, then I was safe, because any midges that came near me would certainly shrivel and die, when it occurred to me that I could not for the life of me remember what that stuff was we burnt in the garden, during our summer barbecues, to keep mozzies at bay. Eventually, it was bugging me so much I had to get the mobile out and call Deb.

Me: What do they call that stuff we burn when we're having a barbecue so we don't get bitten by mosquitos

Deb: Citronella. [Long pause] Has Phil's van got midges then?

Actually this isn't the first strange conversation we have had involving mozzies: once, when we were having a barbecue, our (Polish) neighbour leaned over the fence and asked us if we were "troubled by midgets [sic]" Several answers suggested themselves ("Who do you think I am, Snow White?") but in the end, we smiled and nodded.

Another morning, the conversation turned to the fact that Will Allsop - a visionary architect and town planner, wants to build a mega-opolis of the future along the M62 corridor, linking Liverpool and Hull. He is also the architect who wants to turn Barnsley into a Tuscan hill-town, complete with city wall, which is fine by me, as long as they lock them in at evenings and weekends. Thinking of Hull took my mind back to the phone conversation I had had with someone when I told them I had been born in a Prefab, and for some reason they thought that was funny. I doubt Granny Rudd laughed very much when Bean Street came up in the cross-hairs of the Luftwaffe bomb-sight and vanished in a cloud of dusk and flying bricks, in common with almost 90% of Hull's housing stock, 1939-45. Still, at least she got a new prefab out of it.

The weather continues to bite. As I type this, the central heating is on in both houses, the convector heater is going full blast as well (with Russell in attendance) in the middle of the office floor, I am wearing a Berghaus fleece (none of your cheap rubbish) and STILL my hands are blue with cold. And there is no sign of spring.

Actually, I say that but there are snowdrops in the garden. I know my official harbinger of spring is the first crocus, but I suppose I could say that the snowdrops herald the potentiality of spring, the inevitability of spring. Snowdrops always make me think of that song by Barry Dransfield, "Fair Maids of February" where he sings about the snowdrops that flowered too early

"But with no-one to court us, our courage it failed us

And now we're lying beneath the snow"

There have been times this week when I have felt as irrelevant as the snowdrops.

The animals all hate this weather as much as I do. Dusty has permanently set up her winter HQ under the duvet of our bed, while Kitty is snuggled in the free cat-tent which we got with Felix tokens. Nigel has been under the heated towel rail in Colin's bathroom, and Russell can be found stationed squarely "front and centre" in relation to any heat source, fire or stove.

Tig has been suffering from what the vet describes as "arthritic twinges" of late, and suddenly yelping in pain. On Thursday night, I let her out at 11PM to do her necessary activities in the garden, while I tended the stove. Normally at that time of night, she is quickly back in again, especially when it is cold, windy and rainy, like it was on Thursday night, with the trees thrashing about in the wind down the valley and the plastic furniture blowing about on the decking.

So, I was quite surprised when she didn't come back in by the time I had finished my duties with the coal bucket, and even more so when shouting her and blowing the dog-whistle out of the conservatory door produced no response. The night was both wild and woolly, and there was no point in me going down into the valley to look for her. I cursed the lack of the torch, currently in the back of the dismantled car in the garage miles away at Crosland Moor. So I reluctantly shrugged on my coat and tramped up and down the road, shouting and blowing the dog whistle, to no avail.

I phoned Deb at work to tell her the bad news, and I phoned her mother, who was out at her friend Hazel's having a "biddy's night out". I scoured every inch of the house, upstairs and down, both sides, I even checked the garage in case somehow she had managed to slip past me while I'd been busy with the stove. Nothing. By ten past one, I was resigned to the fact that we'd lost her. I rang Debbie's mother to say I was going to sit up in the conservatory all night in case she came back, only to be told that she'd turned up on their doorstep, wet, muddy and bedraggled (the dog, that is, I can't speak for Debbie's mum).

Whatever spooked her must've been one hell of a twinge, to send her off down through the trees to the factory perimeter, along the path to the Police sports ground, over the cricket field at Armitage Bridge, past the stables, and up the path past where Debbie used to live, and along the A616 for several hundred yards, dodging the late night drivers.

On Friday, I was cooking tea to the background of Kathleen Ferrier singing "What is life to me without thee" and it suddenly hit me how terrible it would have been if she hadn't turned up. In fact, how much everyone I know means to me, whether they be furry or non-furry, and what it would mean to lose any one of them. And I stood there thinking about this, and the immensity of it struck me as I thought what it must be like to be God, and to have to account for every sparrow. Then Debbie started up the planer in the garage (she was re-hanging an internal door and taking some off the bottom as it had been sticking in the wet weather) and Kathleen Ferrier's contralto was underscored by the keening whine of industrial power tools in a way in which she never intended.

So, it's been a week of winning and losing, of unexpected consequences. But then so much of life is. The snowdrops gain ground, but peak too early and are buried by drifts. Granny Rudd lost her house but gained a prefab. We lost the dog, but we found her again. I lost some money from the bank account but in return I got my car back. Sometimes the winners are not always the favourites.

"The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all."

What this means, of course, is that you might as well have a go. That job application you thought you weren't qualified for. That unresolvable situation, might just be able to be turned around. If time and chance happeneth to us all, so we're in with a chance, at least, to make things better. So you might as well go for it. You can win by losing just as much as others can lose by winning. And just at the point of hopelessness, the tipping point, is where the inevitability of spring comes crashing in, bringing goodness and, with it, sunnier days.