You know, I'm not sure I'm going to get used to living out of town. To me, grass is simply a transitional phase in turning sunshine into milk.

"I've got an idea," I said, "I'll just turn up tomorrow morning and start having meetings until my brains turn to jelly, then we'll stop and I'll hide for a bit, then do some more while thinking of other things, then forget it all by the evening and we'll do pretty much the same thing again the day after - and rely on subordinates and assistants to deal with actually running the place."

"Thank goodness for that," said Duffy with a sigh of relief. "I was worried you had no experience of running a large public department."

Working in fiction does give one a somewhat tenuous hold on reality, but it's not the hold that's tenuous - it's the reality: which reality, whose reality, does it matter anyway - and will there be cake."

"And was there?"

"Was there what?"

"Cake."

"Genreally speaking, yes."

"I always thought His plan for mankind was: "Let's just muddle through and see what happens"," said Friday, "and historically speaking, it's a sound one - it's worked on thousands of occasions."