Look, said Ford. He picked up an imaginary phone and dialled an imaginary dial.
Hello? he said into the imaginary mouthpiece. Is that Arthur Dent? Ah, hello, yes. This is Arthur Dent speaking. Don’t hang up.
He looked at the imaginary mouthpiece in disappointment.
He hung up, he said, shrugged, and put the imaginary phone neatly back on its imaginary hook.
This is not my first temporal anomaly, he added.
A glummer look replaced the already glum look on Arthur Dent’s face.
So we’re not home and dry, he said.
We could not even be said, replied Ford, to be home and vigorously towelling ourselves off.
The game continued. The bowler approached the wicket at a lope, a trot, and then a run. He suddenly exploded in a flurry of arms and legs, out of which flew a ball. The batsman swung and thwacked it behind him over the sight-screens. Ford’s eyes followed the trajectory of the ball and jogged momentarily. He stiffened. He looked along the flight path of the ball again and his eyes twitched again.
This isn’t my towel, said Arthur, who was rummaging in his rabbit-skin bag.
Shhh, said Ford. He screwed his eyes up in concentration.
I had a Golgafrinchan jogging towel, continued Arthur, it was blue with yellow stars on it. This isn’t it.
Shhh, said Ford again. He covered one eye and looked with the other.
This one’s pink, said Arthur, it isn’t yours is it?
I would like you to shut up about your towel, said Ford.
It isn’t my towel, insisted Arthur, that is the point I am trying to…
And the time at which I would like you to shut up about it, continued Ford in a low growl, is now.
All right, said Arthur, starting to stuff it back into the primitively stitched rabbit-skin bag. I realize that it is probably not important in the cosmic scale of things, it’s just odd, that’s all. A pink towel suddenly, instead of a blue one with yellow stars.
Ford was beginning to behave rather strangely, or rather not actually beginning to behave strangely but beginning to behave in a way which was strangely different from the other strange ways in which he more regularly behaved. What he was doing was this. Regardless of the bemused stares it was provoking from his fellow members of the crowd gathered round the pitch, he was waving his hands in sharp movements across his face, ducking down behind some people, leaping up behind others, then standing still and blinking a lot. After a moment or two of this he started to stalk forward slowly and stealthily wearing a puzzled frown of concentration, like a leopard that’s not sure whether it’s just seen a half-empty tin of cat food half a mile away across a hot and dusty plain.
This isn’t my bag either, said Arthur suddenly.