IT was the late, adored Douglas Adams who said: “I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.” Judging by the failure to reach a deal on the fiscal framework by the promised deadline of Valentine’s Day, there must be a fair few politicians in Edinburgh and London sporting windswept and interesting hairdos this morning.

How Shirley Williams and Rod Stewart, originators of the bed-head look and the hedgehog hack respectively, must be looking on and thinking: “Look at the state of that.” What do the rest of us reckon about this missed date with destiny? Is it the process of negotiation simply working as it should, or have we entered a realm of Holyrood-Westminster relations where the level of surreality and dysfunction would make Adams chuckle? Never mind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy; give us an A-Z to this impasse.

Such a guide would start with A for “Ah'm confused” (it really should be “I am confused, but we’ve done away with the Scottish cringe, remember, so let us call it as we say it"). The words fiscal framework have the same effect on most folk as a hypnotist counting down from 10 to one. At 10, everything is fine and normal. There was the referendum, yes. Then along came a poll showing the Yes camp in the lead. Cue a midnight hour “vow” that Scotland would be given “extensive new powers” if she stayed. Yup, grand, got all that.

Eight, seven, six … becoming a touch woozy here as we recall the setting up of the Smith Commission and apparent unanimity among the parties that lasted all of five minutes. But an understanding emerged that Holyrood would be able to set rates and thresholds of income tax; that the money raised would go direct to the Scottish government; and there would be further welfare powers devolved.

Five, four, three, two … Feeling sleepy, very sleepy, as negotiations trundle on and such phrases as “per capita indexed deduction”, “levels funding”, and “Barnett 2” fill the air like so many feathers from a lovely fluffy pillow that I’ll just rest my head on for a bit … And that is it. Out for the count. The full-Zzzzzs experience. Wake me when it is over. But when will it be over?

The fiscal framework stushie, like the arguments over Brexit, seem to be a devilishly complex game devised by politicians, for politicians. But at heart it is a simple matter. Not quite Tiddlywinks but not blindfold Monopoly either. It is about people: their numbers, their ages, their ability to generate wealth, and their need for shares of that wealth. How many pay into the pot and what they take out. If the populations of Scotland and the rest of the UK were the same, and were due to increase at a similar rate, there would be no problem; even Stevens. But that is not the case. The rUK population is set to grow twice as fast. Should it therefore be allowed to take out what it reckons it deserves, according to what it pays in, or should there be adequate weighting to reflect the fact that Scotland does not have the ability to increase its population at the same rate?

According to the Smith Commission, there should be no detriment to either side in any financial settlement but that is exactly what each side is alleging will happen if they do not get their way. The Scottish Government reckons Scotland will be worse off by £3 billion over 10 years. The Treasury argues the per capita arrangement, as preferred by the Scottish Government, would be unfair to rUK and, in any case, the deal it is putting forward would still leave Scotland better off than under Barnett. As for the Commons Scottish Affairs Committee, it believes the per capita approach can be tweaked so that there is no detriment to rUK.

If humankind can put a man on the moon, build a European Union out of warring nation states, decode the human genome and achieve other once seemingly impossible ambitions, you would think they could come to an agreement on a fiscal framework, but so far this holy grail has remained out of reach. The UK Government clearly thinks the SNP is, as we say in these parts, at it. In his letter to First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, David Cameron wrote: “It would be very difficult for me to explain to taxpayers in the rest of the UK that Scotland will stop paying income tax into the central pot yet somehow still receive a share of it.” The SNP, meanwhile, ise sticking to the argument that the deal as it stands is unfair and will only grow more so over time. The dice are loaded, claim Scottish ministers, so why roll them?

It had been hoped a deal would be done by today, in time for Valentine’s on Sunday. That would give Holyrood enough time, ministers reckoned, to scrutinise the measures. Yesterday, the deadline was extended to February 23, by which time both houses will have returned from recess. Deadlines which slip once have a tendency to do so again, especially when recesses and half-term holidays are factored in. And all this as Scotland gets ready to go to the polls in May.

You do not need to be unduly cynical to believe that the two occurrences – failure to reach a deal and the Scottish Parliament elections – are connected. It serves the interests of both sides to carry on this dance marathon beyond the election. That would allow the SNP to argue that it is hopeless trying to do a deal with an intransigent, self-centred Westminster, while Westminster will say the SNP is pursuing what Mr Cameron this week called a “grievance agenda”.

What is clear is that both sides are failing, badly, to explain their case. While no one is expecting a minute-by-minute guide to the negotiations, there has to be more transparency about what is being argued over. Sooner or later, one hopes, a deal will have to be sold to the public, and that process will be immeasurably more difficult if the conclusions seem to spring from nowhere. Voters are grown ups. They can take it. If the arguments on both sides are so obvious and right, let us have them.

The longer the to-and-fro goes on the more tempting it becomes to believe that there is no hope of a deal that will leave both sides content, that the “no detriment” game was always going to be a bogey. This whole process, after all, began as a last-minute rush job (how else would one describe the vow?) and it has been a case of make do, mend, and moan ever since. At heart, the problem is a lack of trust. Neither side trusted the other going into negotiations, and nothing has happened since the referendum to change that. If anything, trust has diminished.

No deal by Valentine’s Day, then. Cancel the table, tell the florist not to call. This romance is in deep freeze, and who knows when, or if, Spring will call.