Putting your time in at the office; dutifully spawning your two point five; smiling politely at your retirement party; then chewing on your bedsheet and choking on your canned peaches at the nursing home. It was better never to have been born-never to have wanted anything, never to have hoped for anything.

Combine nursing homes with nursery schools. Bring very old and very young together: they interest one another.

The TV shouted an old black-and-white film he didn't recognize, wheelchairs facing it like church pews.