You even been to Dungeness&;#063;

"This," remarked Mr Smooth-it-away, "is the famous Slough of Despond
- a disgrace to all the neighborhood"...
(Nathaniel Hawthorne, "The Celestial Internet")

*******************

It was built in the 1920s by some eccentric millionaire. The trains are
models of old steam trains, but everything is built to one third scale.
It starts in Hythe and finishes in the aptly named Dungeness (a jutting
out triangle of land which has a couple of lighthouses, a nuclear power
station, commic terns, shingle, a pub, a bird reserve, a rich variety
of flora, and irresistibly suggests a general ambience of Dinginess and
Dunginess). The cruising speed is about 25 miles per hour. It is
staffed by.... well, that is the question. Who is it staffed by?
Obviously, people in appropriate peaked caps. But who are they really?
Are they paid, or are they enthusiasts who volunteer for the privilege
of enacting at weekends and on bank Holidays their lifelong Thomas The
Tank Engine fantasies (GORDON WAS CROSS: WHY SHOULD HENRY HAVE A NEW
COAT OF PAINT?) in a controlled environment? Above all, do they own
their own aspidistras?

During the holiday I had the opportunity of travelling on this
contraption, with D. for company. The first thing you have to remember
is to lower your head when climbing into the carriage.

The second thing you have to remember is that occasion when, at the age
of 2, you were molested in your pram by a squeaking, slavering, blonde
traffic-warden with rhinestone glasses wielding a broken bottle (this
is a complete lie, but never mind). The event had a peculiar influence
on your mental development. By the age of three you were already a
confirmed alcoholic, and by the age of four you were approaching the
major problems of traditional Western philosophy with an attitude of
noddy, big-eared scepticism. It seemed to you at the time (and still
does) that you, and by extension the entire unfriendly, rain-sodden
suburb in which you lived, were in danger of being led into serious
error, and consequent lifelong mustard and cruets, by an addiction to
false disjunctives. Namely (and without prejudice to readers from the
Isle of Man):

Nature or nutmeg?
Chelsea or Manchester United?
Mind or Body?
Tea or Coffee?
Men or Women?
Morecambe or Wise?
To be or not to be?
New Labour or Conservative?
Tweedledee or Tweedleduncansmith?
Preraphaelites or German Expressionists?
Straight glass or jug?

The fact is, of course, that these are simply wrongly posed questions.
I read the other day that there's a tribe in Africa (or thereabouts,
maybe Borneo) who wouldn't understand any of these questions at all.
More interestingly still, they wouldn't recognise them as questions. If
you asked them, they would simply respond "Og". Then they would blow
smoke in your face and commit frenzied adultery. We can learn a lot
from such Oriental wisdom. The truth is, of course, that you can't have
one without the other. There's no smoke without face. All coffee and no
tea makes Jack a hyperactive and quite troublesome little boy. Into
each woman a little man must fall. Behind every successful straight
glass there's a silver tankard with "for twenty years' service"
inscribed on the side. You get more for your money at Sainsburys. Beanz
meanz Heinz.

Having dissected the problems besetting most major nineteenth and
twentieth-century philosophers and _charcutiers_, the route takes you
out of Hythe, past various highly suspicious back gardens each, in
its
own way, meriting paranoic state surveillance (there was a whopping
great bird of prey in one, I swear it), and into a featureless,
crepuscular expanse of pasture land dotted with sheep (cue JS Bach). It
was here that D. spoke:

"All those sheep seem to unconcernedly have the letter W painted on
their flanks".

It was true. Undeniably, horrifyingly true. All those sheep really did
seem to unconcernedly have the letter W painted on their flanks. What
could have been the cause? One's first thought, naturally, is of
defilers of tombstones fallen on hard times... but it was clear that
such people would never have limited themselves exclusively to a W when
the English alphabet contains so many more expressive and attitudinal
letters, such as "N". Another possibility was that the aliens who had
perpetrated the crop circles a few years ago in central and southern
England (weather permitting) had come back to leave further messages.
Maybe they were trying to communicate something paranormal? If we
interpret the crop circles as a technologically advanced "O", then we
get the message "OOOWWWW", or possibly, "WOOOOOWOO". If you then take
into account Stonehenge, the Pyramids, Atlantis, Macchu Picchu and the
Eclipse, the conclusion is obvious:

I shouldn't have had that last whisky.

Someone in a ML asked recently: "What does loneliness mean to you?". My
first response was "Suspecting that I am no-one's first choice as
confidant".

My second, slightly three-sheets-to-the-winder response is "Not being
able to construct a huge perpendicular ego on the basis of having
someone with long jet-black hair cooking the dinner and humming along
to Costello Singing Bacharach on the CD player".

(For it is well known among the condescendii, Bacharach is God, only
with an awful haircut.)

As the train approaches New Romney, it lets out a whistle. At this
point, you become aware that the smell of the smoke blowing in through
the half-open wooden door of the carriage is unique, pleasantly acrid,
and strangely Victorian.

(Rosie fingered Dawn, did she? Well bully for her.)

I don't think anything will ever change for me. It's these moments of
lucidity I have. I expect that in ten years if I am not in a hospital
bed with a tank of liquid oxygen by my side, I will be in front of a
computer at dawn with an empty whisky bottle by my side,
trichorrhexomaniating with my eyebrows and writing appalling rubbish to
some longsuffering website or newsgroup. It appears to be my destiny. I
smile to myself as I reflect that as destinies go, there are a hell of
a lot of worse ones around. I could have been born a non-smoker. That
would really have been awful!

It would have been nice to have had a different life though...

I try to be pleasant to people but it seems I am not very good at it.
People don't want to talk to me. Those who do generally adopt the tone
of one humouring an idiot. IRL I always assume it's the haircut. Are
haircuts visible on websites though? I suppose they must be,
subliminally. You're all far too nice to say so.

Anyway. The train has left New Romney and is now heading emphysemically
for Dungieness. It has run out of coal and the frothy-faced drivers are
chucking whatever comes to hand into the furnace to keep the wheels
rolling:

old cornflake packets
headless Action Man dolls
used condoms
betrayed election manifestos
rotten parsnips
back issues of "Cosmopolitan" from the 80s
jaundiced, beerstained university diplomas
false smiles
false breasts
a bootleg recording of a Led Zeppelin concert
Two or three half-empty tubes of fluoride toothpaste
withered roses
three or four chest X-ray photographs
the joy of sex
30ml tears, distilled and phialled in crocodile skin (serve cold)
Two copies of the Berlitz edition of "Russian In Three Months"
(1980)
Michael Fish
common sense
A kilo of red herring (NOT smoaked)
The New World Order
An empty polystyrene carton labelled "McPuke"

The smoke changes colour but the chuffing continues. By this means do
we attain the privileged heights and wastes of Dinginess without
further incident.

Having alighted on the platform, the visitor is welcome to stop for tea
at the Station Cafeteria. There are flapjacks. The sun is shining. All
is right with the world. The amiable visitor may wish to ascend
the
lighthouse, embark stumblingly on the shingle, admire the variety of
Wild Flowers (step not upon!) and Rapacious Seabirds, go for a drink in
the Featureless Pub, or remove his shoes and nurse his bunions. He may
then wander around aimlessly wondering why some people he's never met
don't get on better than they do and what he can do about it all.

The dawn throws red about the sky like a kerosene-happy Welsh
nationalist. Nice to see you tickle the lickle salmonbellied
flames.

That's it, I'm going to bed. If I discover tomorrow morning that my
spelling hasn't suffered too much, I might even post this.

(The return journey is much the same only in reverse. The smoke
re-enters the funnel and the ashes turn back into coal. The sky gets
darker again, the whisky bottle fills up, the ashtray empties, and you
go back to work and the Losers Bar. All the broken plates of your life
reassemble. Apologies return to the munching mouths from whence they
fled. Holidays are thus revealed to be an illusion. Bacharach, JB and
Coke is really all there is. Never mind, it could be worse.)

Anthea

Every so often I struggle out of bed to find a semicircle of cats
staring philosophically at a bowl containing a pullulating mixture of
cheap cat food and carousing ants.

My solution is to redeploy the cat bowl (after cleaning it). It also
provides the cats with innocent amusement, a daily game of "Find the
Fish" (no Monty Python references intended).

When ants develop the ability to send up spy satellites, my cats are
going to be in real trouble.