Dialogue: Our life's not a race - it's more like a steeplechase

By JOE BENNETT

Twice in my life I have had a glass of wine thrown over me.

The first was 20 years ago in Canada. I might have deserved it. The second, well, she had the fillings in my teeth buzzing within five minutes of our being introduced by letting me know that she was not a morning person.

It's not a statement that impresses me. It seems to be like saying no, thank you, but I'm not really into oxygen.

I realise, of course, that we all feel the lids turn leaden at certain hours of the clock - me, I'm inclined to slide towards Bedfordshire about 3 pm, especially if lunch has been good, but nevertheless I am confident that if summoned to defend the motherland or whatever in mid-afternoon, I'd be up like a flagstaff and waggling the dagger in a state of alertness that none could criticise.

Whereas Miss Lovely gave the impression that if war were declared shortly after breakfast, she'd be likely to yawn and leave the heroism to everyone else on the grounds that as a non-morning person she might get confused over the tank controls.

Now it seems to me that over the centuries the philosopher bods have by and large concluded that life's not a stroll on the flat but more of a steeplechase, and that virtue, happiness and all the rest of it come from striving to hurdle such obstacles as the great timekeeper happens to biff in our way.

And it further seems to me that the tendency to feel a bit bleary after rolling from the sack is one of the more easily negotiated obstacles, and as an excuse for incompetence and other slackery it's risible.

Perhaps it was her remarkably equine teeth, or her cement-mixer laugh or it might have been the liberality of the flunkey with the foil-necked jeroboam, but anyway it wasn't long before I was expanding on this theory with vigour.

It was a lunchtime bash and although the noonday bells had yet to chime, Miss Lovely responded to my expansion with an energy which not only had me leaning a little away from her but which also rather undermined her morning-person theory.

And then we got on to patriotism. In reply to her probing I told her that I was not myself a patriot, that I was above all that sort of thing intellectually, but that if called on to do my bit against Johnny Foreigner, I'd be the first to brandish the swagger stick.

She said that was, and I'm quoting, inconsistent, archaic and ovine.

"Inconsistent?" I echoed.

"Inconsistent," she repeated. How could I claim to be consistent if I decried patriotism but was willing to go to war?

"But I do not claim to be consistent," I squeaked. "I revel in inconsistency. Let me explain," I explained. "To vow allegiance," I said, "to a random lump of rock on which one happens to be born or resident is not the act of a reasonable being, but rather the act of an unthinking primitive, a thug, a pack animal, an automaton of instinct."

"Yes," she said, and offered me a smile consisting of three parts gall to one part cobra venom.

"But," I added, in the manner of a player of stud poker hauling an ace from what they regrettably call the hole, "I am not a reasonable being."

"No," she said, "you're not."

"No indeed," I said, "I am an automaton of instinct and I am a reasonable being. I am, as Pope so wisely put it, caught on the isthmus of a middle state, a being darkly wise and rudely great.

"I am both thinker and doer, both rationalist and lover, both intelligence and feral gut. I am, to paraphrase Pope yet further, both the glory of the world and its jest.

"And so, darling," I added with a smile as sweet as one of those appalling Turkish desserts whose name begins with b and which can rot the teeth from 30 paces, "are you."

"Am I indeed?" she said in a tone as arch as Marble.

"Yes, yes, sweetypie, you are. Consistency," I said, "is the hobgoblin of the tiny mind. For example, like you, I am intellectually convinced that women have been oppressed by men. Like you, I am intellectually convinced of the case for equal rights for women. Like you, I am intellectually convinced that women can do pretty much everything a man can do bar a few physiological functions. And like you, I will argue the cause with any man, woman or management consultant.

"But," I said, and here's the point, "none of that intellectual conviction prevents me from laughing at a good sexist joke. And if you were honest, you would laugh too."

"Try me," she said - and I did.