From here it was a four-mile walk to his village: a further mile to the turning, to which the abominable Russell had now fiercely declined to take him, and from there a further three miles of winding country lane. The Saab seethed off into the night. Arthur watched it go, as stunned as a man might be who, having believed himself to be totally blind for five years, suddenly discovers that he had merely been wearing too large a hat. He shook his head sharply in the hope that it might dislodge some salient fact which would fall into place and make sense of an otherwise utterly bewildering Universe, but since the salient fact, if there was one, entirely failed to do this, he set off up the road again, hoping that a good vigorous walk, and maybe even some good painful blisters, would help to reassure him of his own existence at least, if not his sanity. It was 10.30 when he arrived, a fact he discovered from the steamed and greasy window of the Horse and Groom pub, in which there had hung for many years a battered old Guiness clock which featured a picture of an emu with a pint glass jammed rather amusingly down its throat. This was the pub at which he had passed the fateful lunchtime during which first his house and then the entire planet Earth had been demolished, or rather had seemed to be demolished. No, damn it, had been demolished, because if it hadn’t then where the bloody heck had he been for the last eight years, and how he had got there if not in one of the big yellow Vogon ships which the appalling Russell had just been telling him were merely drug-induced hallucinations, and yet if it had been demolished, what was he currently standing on?… He jammed the brake on this line of thought because it wasn’t going to get him any further than it had the last twenty times he’d been over it. He started again. This was the pub at which he had passed the fateful lunchtime during which whatever it was had happened that he was going to sort out later had happened, and… It still didn’t make sense. He started again. This was the pub in which… This was a pub. Pubs served drinks and he couldn’t half do with one. Satisfied that his jumbled thought processes had at last arrived at a conclusion, and a conclusion he was happy with, even if it wasn’t the one he had set out to achieve, he strode towards the door. And stopped. 從這裏到他的村莊有四英里的路要走：離路口還有一英里，討厭的拉塞爾拒絕載他了；剩下的三英里則是糾結的鄉間小道。 那輛薩博惱怒地衝進了夜幕中。阿瑟看着它離去，腦子一片空白，感覺就好像一個認爲自己五年來徹底失明的人最後發現只是因爲戴的帽子太大。 他猛地甩了甩頭，希望能夠甩去一些明顯的事實，那些事實打算依次出現然後向阿瑟呈現出另外一個完全不知所云的宇宙。但是由於那些明顯的事實（如果有的話）完全地失敗了，他就繼續上路，希望充滿活力的步伐甚至一些有益的疼痛的水泡，可以至少幫助他確定自己的存在，但自己的心智健全就不一定了。 當他到達時，已經是晚上十點半，他從“馬兒和馬伕”酒館又溼又油的窗戶上發現了一個事實，那個酒吧多年來一直掛着一隻被壓癟了的破舊吉尼斯表，表上畫着一隻鴯鶓，一隻一品脫的玻璃杯滑稽地塞在那隻鴯鶓的喉嚨裏。 這就是陪他度過了那個意義重大的午餐時間的酒館。在那段時間裏，先是他自己的房子被毀了，然後是整個地球也被毀了——或者應該說看上去被毀了。不，該死的，它就是被毀了。因爲如果它沒被毀，那麼這過去的八年來他究竟在他媽的哪兒？如果他沒有呆在討厭的拉塞爾所說的只是藥物幻覺的沃貢黃色大飛船上，他又是怎麼去的那些地方？但是如果它被毀了，那麼現在他又是站在哪兒……？ 他打斷了自己的思緒，因爲這並不能讓他比前二十次想得更遠。 他再一次思考。 這就是陪他度過了那個意義重大的午餐時間的酒館。在那段時間裏，無論發生了什麼，他隨後都會搞清楚的，而且…… 這仍然理不出個頭緒。 他再一次思考。 這就是那個酒館…… 這就是個酒館。 酒館是提供飲料的，但他根本不想來一杯。 他混亂的思路終於得出了一個令人高興的結論，他對此感到滿意，儘管那並不是他一開始打算得出的結論。他大步走向酒館的門。 然後停了下來。
