The Road to Little Dribbling Read Free

and a few charities had taken over other abandoned premises, but on the whole Eastleigh seemed to be a place where you could either have a cup of coffee or sit and watch pigeons defecate. I had a cup of coffee, for the sake of the economy, watched a pigeon defecate across the way, then presented myself at Wessex House for my test.

    Five of us were present for testing on this particular morning. We were shown to a roomful of desks, each with a computer screen and a mouse sitting on a plain mat, and seated so that we couldn’t see anyone else’s screen. Once settled, we were given a practice test of four questions to make sure we were comfortably in command of our mouse and mousepad. Because it was a practice test, the questions were encouragingly easy, along the lines of:
    Manchester United is:
    (a) a political party
    (b) a dance band
    (c) an English football team
    —
    It took about fifteen seconds for four of us to answer the practice questions, but one lady—pleasant, middle-aged, slightly plumpish, I am guessing from one of those Middle Eastern countries where they eat a lot of sticky sweets—took considerably longer. Twice the supervisor came to see if she was all right. I passed the time discreetly looking in my desk drawers—they were unlocked but empty—and seeing if there was any way to have fun moving a cursor around a blank screen. There isn’t.
    At length the woman announced that she had finished and the supervisor came to check her work. He bent to her screen and in a tone of quiet amazement said: “You’ve missed them all.”
    She beamed uncertainly, not sure if this was an achievement.
    “Do you want to try them again?” the supervisor asked helpfully. “You’re entitled to try again.”
    The woman gave every appearance of having no very clear idea of what was going on, but gamely elected to press on, and so the test began.
    The first question was: “You’ve seen Eastleigh. Are you sure you want to stay in Britain?” Actually, I don’t recall what the first question was or any of those that followed. We weren’t allowed to bring anything to the desk, so I couldn’t take notes or tap my teeth thoughtfully with a pencil. The test consisted of twenty-four multiple-choice questions and took only about three minutes. You either know the answers or you don’t. I presented myself at the supervisor’s desk upon completion, and we waited together while the computer checked my answers, a process that took about as long as the test itself, and at last he told me with a smile that I had passed, but he couldn’t tell me exactly how I did. The computer only indicated pass or fail.

    “I’ll just print out your result,” he said. This took another small age. I was hoping for a smart parchment-like certificate, like you get when you do a first aid course, but it was just a faintly printed letter confirming that I was certified as intellectually fit for life in modern Britain.
    Beaming like the lady from the Middle East (who appeared to be hunting around for a keyboard when last I glimpsed her), I left the building feeling pleased, even a little exhilarated. The sun was shining. Across the way at the bus station, two young men were having a morning aperitif from matching cans of lager. A pigeon picked at a cigarette butt and squeezed out a little shit. Life in modern Britain, it seemed to me, was pretty good.
    IV
    A day or so later, I met my publisher, a kindly and much loved fellow named Larry Finlay, for lunch in London, to discuss a subject for my next book. Larry lives in quiet dread that I will suggest some ludicrously uncommercial topic—a biography of Mamie Eisenhower, perhaps, or something on Canada—and so always tries to head me off with an alternative suggestion.

    “Do you know,” he said, “it’s twenty years since you wrote Notes from a Small Island ?” (This was my first book about Britain. It did awfully well there.)
    “Twenty years?” I replied, amazed at how much past one can