Essential Investigation

Do you know where you're going to? Furthermore, do you like the things that life is showing you?

-- Diana Ross And Cromarty (mike.morris@anthro.ox.ac.uk), November 28, 2001

Answers

I have always found it better to travel than to arrive, whether hopefully or not. That way it's always possible to know where you've come from, as you've just left it and someone will have reminded you in a slow, patient tone of voice about the precise location of your point of departure. You are also better equipped to judge whether you like what life has just shown you, as, rudely torn from it, you can see it for what it is.

Mind you, I take issue with the idea that life "shows you" things. In my experience, life tiptoes into your room, picks up a number of old bills and unironed shirts, and slips things underneath them. You then discover them when you're in a hurry to get out the next morning.

-- Sheena Easton Samoa (wellmeaning@hotmail.com), November 28, 2001.

Oh fuck! Now you're going to have us all torturing our synapses in the wee hours for combinations of popular entertainers and recondite geographical expressions. Bastard.

-- Denise van Outer Mongolia (tim_collard@yahoo.com), November 29, 2001.

I've travelled each and ev'ry highway, but I never been to me.

-- Frank Sumatra (p.l.andrews@bham.ac.uk), November 30, 2001.

"Frank Sumatra". That deserves to be a comic book.

-- Charles Atlasreader (mike.morris@anthro.ox.ac.uk), November 30, 2001.

Surely the end is near for this thread. I think we all know where it's going, and that's not a pretty place.

-- Barbara Taylor Bradford-upon-Avon (wellmeaning@hotmail.com), November 30, 2001.

Bicester?

-- Lord Fauxnaif (mike.morris@anthro.ox.ac.uk), November 30, 2001.

Worse, I fear.

-- Mickey Mousehole (wellmeaning@hotmail.com), November 30, 2001.

Worse than Bicester? Not Godalming, surely?

-- Deborah Kerrlisle (peter.j.ross@btinternet.com), December 01, 2001.