What? What? Hands? Feet?

And of course I shall never forget- three days out of RAF Luna- the moment when Barrett took a crow-bar and tore up some of the plates that made up the very floor of the HMSS Spitfire. You can imagine the panic; an ecstasy of fumbling for respirators and clamp-suits. But here's the thing: Up came the first plate. Were we sucked to our death? We were not. Up came the second, with similar results. Up came the third and Barrett dropped his crow-bar and just looked into the darkness he had opened, as the Spitfire continued on its course to DELETED.

Then he fell to his knees and took off his left glove, even as the lads called upon him to come away from there. He reached into the blackness...and closed his hand around something.Clay. Hard-packed clay. Barrett turned to the rest of us and smiled. "Lads", he said. "We can tunnel our way out!"

Men of this and that.

I wonder what they will think when, someday soon, mankind finally sets foot on the moon. Will they find the Sherman tank, do you think? The submarine? And who, alive now, will be able to tell them about the tunnels, the bunkers and the man from elsewhere who walks through stones? Never seen to eat, he was- if he he was- rather a quiet chap, prone to walking. Hadn't the slightest respect for gravity, of course. Spooned a couple of girls from the village, I hear. Hence the lead-lined ambulances nine months later.

Egg and bacon in a lighthouse of your choice.

Grateful as they were to be sitting in Woomera rather than Moscow, they would still insist on black bread and acorn coffee for breakfast. They had no problem with our beer, however, taking to light ale with gusto and gradually replacing their old marching songs with such gems as 'Roll Out The Barrel' and 'My Old Dutch'. Whilst in their cups they would occasionally succumb to reminiscence and amaze us all with stories of living nervous systems maintained electrically in saline solutions or human eyes attached to cine cameras instead of ground lenses. A roll of film was instanced to support the claim that the picture quality was far greater than anything hitherto achieved by non-organic optics, and I have to admit that the case was well made. Who knows what leaps might have been made- placing Britain in the forefront of the field- if the unfortunate man in question had not taken to secreting various acids in a tin cup, gradually filling a bath tub with same and then, quietly, with no more fuss than an unexpectedly fond handshake all round, slipping naked into the liquid?

Kiss Me Deadly

Alright, chaps. Take all the water out of that sea and put it in these cardboard boxes. Make sure you assemble the boxes correctly first, of course. Some favour a line or two of sellotape along the joins as a precaution; others cite the same some silly, going so far as to say that they weigh the day ill when the chill wind of "just in case" shall pause us on our march to space where by the grace of Hay we shall live to toast another day. Or night. Bright. Very bright in here. What time is it? How many, and what are we actually even counting?

A long line of chaps, stretching across the desert from the crash site, bucket-brigading bits and pieces of us to the road, where there was a lead-lined ambulance waiting under guard. I have to take this on trust, of course. Wasn't awake (or at least not in the sense I think you think I probably mean) to see it. although I do remember looking up from the bottom of a bucket and seeing a cheerful squaddie looking in at me, cheerily wording all colloquial-like, even as the hand that held the handle of the pail began to ever so slightly glow.

No tuck shops in the Phantom Zone

Thrud, thrud, thrud of ill-fitting boots on the flagstones of the scullery. Clack of the pantry door handle; screef of the door against the floor as it's opened. The click of a ring-finger against a jar of preserves as a fist closes around same. Scloop of the lid coming off. Raspberry. I can smell it from here.

We picked them last autumn (fall, she called it) and made the jam ourselves, in a big pot over a fire in the side garden. The smell of applewood burning; sound of the pot lazily bubbling. Throw another bag of sugar in, someone suggested.

Where do you sleep when you've destroyed your own bed?

Well, I'll be a Dutchman

Woke up later on in another part of the hospital. Well, at least a projection of me did. Which opens up all sorts of curious avenues, I suppose. If I can project myself into the nurses' quarters (I know, I know) then where else might I shoot off to while what they're still referring to as my brain snoozes or otherwise passes a dozy hour?

And were they the real nurses' quarters? I mean to say- Might they have been a mere projection of the nurses' quarters? A summoning, if you like, from the silted floor of the sludgy grey trough labelled 'take a gander at this, chaps', half-remembered from something overheard when I was alive?

Or am I alive now?

Do dead men think about nurses buttoning their fronts?

No head to speak of

They're all around the bed. Of course they are. Where else would they be? I can hear the sea. I can hear the sea. That rattling again, though. I took it upon myself to apply a little oil (well, margarine) to the joints of this bed-thing they have me in and ended up with bits of it all over the place- lengths of tubing, mattress springs and pillow-insides. The staff were very kind in the matter. I'd missed my supper in the kerfuffle, so a couple of slices of toast and a brown betty-ful of nicely understewed tea were produced from somewhere, much to my grateful appreciation. I few things niggled, though, as I munched. Where was that smell of salt coming from? What sort of salad was this (on my toast, no less)? And- this plucked from the memory of my afternoon's unscrewing- why were the tubular support sections of the bed filled with sand?

That chap on the ceiling is gone, at least.

Twice round the lighthouse for £256,000,000.

Something with caterpillar tracks, fit for the crawl across the face of where foot has never stepped. Comfy seats. Well, as comfy as is reasonable. But you know it'll be the usual bucket seats. Looped straps along the bulkhead to hold onto in the event of a jolt. And you know there'll be plenty of those. And some boffin's variation on the Motorman's Friend, no doubt, for those little emergencies (I wonder what the ladies use?).

Doubtless they're already sketching the family saloon version, against the day when all this becomes as unremarkable as a trip to Blackpool or an inside lav.