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hitchhikersguide

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"Come off it, Mr Dent,", he said, "you can't win you know. You

can't lie in front of the bulldozer indefinitely." He tried to

make his eyes blaze fiercely but they just wouldn't do it.

Arthur lay in the mud and squelched at him.

"I'm game," he said, "we'll see who rusts first."

"I'm afraid you're going to have to accept it," said Mr Prosser

gripping his fur hat and rolling it round the top of his head,

"this bypass has got to be built and it's going to be built!"

"First I've heard of it," said Arthur, "why's it going to be

built?"

Mr Prosser shook his finger at him for a bit, then stopped and

put it away again.

"What do you mean, why's it got to be built?" he said. "It's a

bypass. You've got to build bypasses."

Bypasses are devices which allow some people to drive from point

A to point B very fast whilst other people dash from point B to

point A very fast. People living at point C, being a point

directly in between, are often given to wonder what's so great

about point A that so many people of point B are so keen to get

there, and what's so great about point B that so many people of

point A are so keen to get there. They often wish that people

would just once and for all work out where the hell they wanted

to be.

Mr Prosser wanted to be at point D. Point D wasn't anywhere in

particular, it was just any convenient point a very long way from

points A, B and C. He would have a nice little cottage at point

D, with axes over the door, and spend a pleasant amount of time

at point E, which would be the nearest pub to point D. His wife

of course wanted climbing roses, but he wanted axes. He didn't

know why - he just liked axes. He flushed hotly under the

derisive grins of the bulldozer drivers.

He shifted his weight from foot to foot, but it was equally

uncomfortable on each. Obviously somebody had been appallingly

incompetent and he hoped to God it wasn't him.

Mr Prosser said: "You were quite entitled to make any suggestions

or protests at the appropriate time you know."

"Appropriate time?" hooted Arthur. "Appropriate time? The first I

knew about it was when a workman arrived at my home yesterday. I

asked him if he'd come to clean the windows and he said no he'd

come to demolish the house. He didn't tell me straight away of

course. Oh no. First he wiped a couple of windows and charged me

a fiver. Then he told me."

"But Mr Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning

office for the last nine month."

"Oh yes, well as soon as I heard I went straight round to see

them, yesterday afternoon. You hadn't exactly gone out of your

way to call attention to them had you? I mean like actually

telling anybody or anything."

"But the plans were on display ..."

"On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find

them."

"That's the display department."

"With a torch."

"Ah, well the lights had probably gone."

"So had the stairs."

"But look, you found the notice didn't you?"

"Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom

of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a

sign on the door saying Beware of the Leopard."

A cloud passed overhead. It cast a shadow over Arthur Dent as he

lay propped up on his elbow in the cold mud. It cast a shadow

over Arthur Dent's house. Mr Prosser frowned at it.

"It's not as if it's a particularly nice house," he said.

"I'm sorry, but I happen to like it."

"You'll like the bypass."

"Oh shut up," said Arthur Dent. "Shut up and go away, and take

your bloody bypass with you. You haven't got a leg to stand on

and you know it."

Mr Prosser's mouth opened and closed a couple of times while his

mind was for a moment filled with inexplicable but terribly

attractive visions of Arthur Dent's house being consumed with

fire and Arthur himself running screaming from the blazing ruin