MY GOOD friend the Philosopher was sitting opposite me on the train wearing the Donegal tweed jacket, which he favours for trips beyond the urban scramble to distant places where, as he puts it, the young birds still sing in a sweet treble and the waters rush clean and clear.

On his knees was spread a napkin, whiter than the soul of a saint, and on it he had placed a blue sandwich box, in which were laid two hunks of gum-rubbing brown bread filled by uneven slices of mature Cheddar cheese lightly spiced with a film of brown sauce.

By these sandwiches, to the left side of the box, there was a fork, a small jar of pickles, several red grapes on a stalk and a wedge of thickly crusted pie, whose deep and pungent meat embraced a section of boiled egg.

The Philosopher sighed, pressed the lid back on the box, dabbed his lips with the napkin, as if in anticipation, and whispered contentedly "for later", before appearing to notice me for the first time.

"And where are you going on this fine day?" he asked, adjusting the racing-green handkerchief in his breast pocket, as the sun glinted on the eyes of a black cat prowling in the long grass of the railway embankment.

"I have a business appointment," I said, rather pompously, though, in truth, I was to speak on the subject of whimsy to a small gathering of women in a suburban Boy Scout hut. I love those old meeting halls with their creaking boards, the groaning radiators, the hissing urns and the sad letters on the memorial boards, naming those from this little community who had been killed in war. But each day the cleaner’s feather duster finds golden crevices to shine those names.

"And where are you going with that splendid, mouth- watering picnic?" I asked.

"Well, I am going to the river to think," he replied. "What about?" I asked.

"About life in general and the very moment when a smile becomes a laugh," he said. "That is something that the scientists in their laboratories cannot explain, but it is something that we all experience. When I have thought about that for a while, I will consider whether we could live in a world without money. It is a fond dream of mine, though perhaps a little unrealistic.

"No, we couldn’t manage without money. It dominates everything," I said.

"Yes, it does now, but money is only the measure of our prosperity. It is not the prosperity itself. Money has had a short history in human affairs," he said.

"But wouldn’t it be nice if the banks could go back to the days when you had two accounts – a deposit account from which you gained a small amount of interest and a current account from which the bank took a small amount of interest?" I said.

"Indeed," said the Philosopher, warming to his theme. "Returning to that would be an improvement. Do you remember the old bank managers sitting on the swivel chairs in a timber-panelled office, behind a desk with quills and an inkwell, green leather pads and a blotter by the photograph of their children? You could trust a bank manager then. Now there are more bank accounts than permutations in the football pools."