Free So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish by Douglas Adams Page B

curling miles of cliffs and sand, palm trees, breakers and sunsets are described in the Guide as "Boffo. A good one."

And somewhere on this good boffo stretch of coastline lay the house of this inconsolable man, a man whom many regarded as being insane. But this was only, as he would tell people, because he was.

One of the many many reasons why people thought him insane was because of the peculiarity of his house which, even in a land where most people's houses were peculiar in one way or another, was quite extreme in his peculiarness.

His house was called The Outside of the Asylum.

His name was simply John Watson, though he preferred to be called - and some of his friends had now reluctantly agreed to this - Wonko the Sane.

In his house were a number of strange things, including a grey glass bowl with eight words engraved upon it.

We can talk of him much later on - this is just an interlude to watch the sun go down and to say that he was there watching it.

He had lost everything he cared for, and was now simply waiting for the end of the world - little realizing that it had already been and gone.

Chapter 16

After a disgusting Sunday spent emptying rubbish bins behind a pub in Taunton, and finding nothing, no raffle ticket, no telephone number, Arthur tried everything he could to find Fenchurch, and the more things he tried, the more weeks passed.

He raged and railed against himself, against fate, against the world and its weather. He even, in his sorrow and his fury, went and sat in the motorway service station cafeteria where he'd been just before he met her.

"It's the drizzle that makes me particularly morose."

"Please shut up about the drizzle," snapped Arthur.

"I would shut up if it would shut up drizzling."

"Look ..."

"But I'll tell you what it will do when it shuts up drizzling, shall I?"

"No."

"Blatter."

"What?"

"It will blatter."

Arthur stared over the rim of his coffee cup at the grisly outside world. It was a completely pointless place to be, he realized, and he had been driven there by superstition rather than logic. However, as if to bait him with the knowledge that such coincidences could in fact happen, fate had chosen to reunite him with the lorry driver he had encountered there last time.

The more he tried to ignore him, the more he found himself being dragged back into the gravitic whirlpool of the man's exasperating conversation.

"I think," said Arthur vaguely, cursing himself for even bothering to say this, "that it's easing off."

"Ha!"

Arthur just shrugged. He should go. That's what he should do. He should just go.

"It never stops raining!" ranted the lorry driver. He thumped the table, spilt his tea, and actually, for a moment, appeared to be steaming.

You can't just walk off without responding to a remark like that.

"Of course it stops raining," said Arthur. It was hardly an elegant refutation, but it had to be said.

"It rains ... all ... the time," raved the man, thumping the table again, in time to the words.

Arthur shook his head.

"Stupid to say it rains all the time ..." he said.

The man's eyebrows shot up, affronted.

"Stupid? Why's it stupid? Why's it stupid to say it rains all the time if it rains the whole time?"

"Didn't rain yesterday."

"Did in Darlington."

Arthur paused, warily.

"You going to ask me where I was yesterday?" asked the man. "Eh?"

"No," said Arthur.

"But I expect you can guess."

"Do you."

"Begins with a D."

"Does it."

"And it was pissing down there, I can tell you."

"You don't want to sit there, mate," said a passing stranger in overalls to Arthur cheerily. "That's Thundercloud Corner that is. Reserved special for old Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head here. There's one reserved in every motorway caff between here and sunny Denmark. Steer clear is my advice. 'Swhat we all do. How's it going, Rob? Keeping busy? Got your wet-weather tyres on? Har har."

He breezed by and went to tell a joke about Britt Ekland to someone at a nearby