On my mind lately has been the possibility that, when one knows exactly what one wants, then no one can stop one, to the extent of one’s ability and resources. This I have observed in Gamma wheedling what she wants out of me, and Beta relentlessly working to achieve what she wants to, and Alpha of course etc etc.

Last night as I put Gamma to bed I grabbed a book off the shelf at random; actually, I was looking for a particular Dahl book, couldn’t find it and instead went looking for something else in English, and stumbled across “Fantastic Stories” by Terry Jones and let Gamma pick to stories out and she chose “Ship of Fools” and “The Fast Road”.

“Ship of Fools” is about a boy, Ben, who runs away to sea and finds himself on a ship of fools. They lose the ship in a storm, despite Ben’s heroic efforts.

By dawn the storm had died down, and Ben was exhausted, but he’d managed to save everyone. One of the fools, however, had thrown all the oars overboard while Ben hadn’t been watching, so they couldn’t row anywhere. And now the First Mate was so hungry he’d started to eat the lifeboat!

Overall, it was nauseating how closely the story matched the antics of the Bush “administration”.

The second story, “The High Road” was about a magical road that took you where you wanted to go, very quickly. The only catch was, you had to know exactly where you wanted to go, otherwise it took you nowhere, equally fast, and you end up in Nowhere, wandering around among other people also wandering around, trying to figure out where they are.

The Dobl