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"Have you seen this new book about punctuation?" said the man with the dog.

"What new book about punctuation?", said the lady with the green hairdo.

"This new book about punctuation that everyone's talking about," said the man with the dog.

"I'm not talking about any new book about punctuation," said the green lady, "and nor are any of the people I know."

"Well, maybe not everyone's talking about it," said the man with the dog, relenting, "but everyone's buying it."

"Buying what?"

"This new book about conversation."

Before she could ask what new book about conversation this might be, the resident Welshman, sitting over his pint, came to his rescue.

"I know the one you mean," he said. "Surprise best-seller of the season. Everyone is buying it for everyone else."

"That's the thing," said the man with the dog. "I just wondered how much small they can get."

"Smaller?" said the Welshman. "How do you mean?"

"Well, there has been a fashion recently for books which examine one thing in depth. There was a book one year which told the life of the first giraffe in Europe. Then there was a chap that did a book on cod. Another did one on the history of the nutmeg. There was a book called Trilobite or something, which just did one fossil. One year it was tulips. So people obviously have a taste for studying one little thing in detail. But I never imagined they would do a book about punctuation marks. So that's why I ask: how much smaller can they get?"

"I'm not so sure it's a matter of getting smaller and smaller," said the resident Welshman. "I think it's a matter of tidiness."

"Tidiness? How do you reckon that, boyo?"

"Well, in an increasingly complicated world, where we find it harder and harder to keep track of everything, people get comfort from having at least one part of the universe properly organised. That's why there was a great fashion a couple of years back for - what was that Chinese stuff called?"

"Feng shui?" said someone.

"Right. Feng shui. Everyone bought books on feng shui. Told you how to put your stuff in the right place. All gone now. You don't see any more books on feng shui. Need another way of organising the world. Punctuation! Get the commas in the right place, and you can feel right with the world. As we speak, publishers are huddling together in a circle and discussing new books on tidiness. I wouldn't be surprised if one day someone didn't produce a coffee table book on rubbish. The history of waste disposal. The art of throwing things away."

"It's a waste of time throwing things away," said the Major, who had been listening to all this. "Sooner or later some archaeologist chappy is going to come along and dig it up and say: Look what they threw away in medieval times! What a find!"

"It's true, actually," said the Welshman. "What people use gets worn out, or gets broken and destroyed. What people don't want gets thrown away while it's still in good nick and then later gets found by archaeologists. Archaeology is the history of the unwanted."

"If what you say is true," said the lady with the green hair," then somewhere there is a great forgotten dump of books on feng shui. Let's hope that someone put them in the right place, facing the right way."

"Next time I want to throw something away," said the Major, "I'll go straight to the local museum and offer it to them. Bypass the historical process. Save burying it and finding it later. Tomorrow's artefacts ready today!"

"I'd take it direct to the Turner Prize people, if I were you," said the Welshman. "They're very hot on contemporary rubbish."

There was a loud groan through the pub. We all knew his views on the Turner Prize. The fact that we mostly agreed with him was neither here nor there.

"Well, I suppose one day there'll be a landfill site full of this book on punctuation,"said the Major.

"What book on punctuation ?" said a woman who had just arrived.

"This book on punctuation that everyone's talking about," said the green lady, who had only heard about it two minutes before. I thought I would go to the loo and hope the topic had changed by the time I got back, and indeed it had, because they were now talking about why there were no Christmas shows on ice any more.

Independent 09 12 2003