for Sally
The regular early morning yell of horror was the sound of Arthur Dent waking up and suddenly remembering where he was.
It wasn't just that the cave was cold, it wasn't just that it was damp and smelly. It was the fact that the cave was in the middle of Islington and there wasn't a bus due for two million years.
Time is the worst place, so to speak, to get lost in, as Arthur Dent could testify, having been lost in both time and space a good deal. At least being lost in space kept you busy.
He was stranded in prehistoric Earth as the result of a complex sequence of events which had involved him being alternately blown up and insulted in more bizarre regions of the Galaxy than he had ever dreamt existed, and though life had now turned very, very, very quiet, he was still feeling jumpy.
He hadn't been blown up now for five years. Since he had hardly seen anyone since he and Fnord Prefect had parted company four years previously, he hadn't been insulted in all that time either.
Except just once.