'Yes, it's happening again - Alice In Wonderland time. It's quite inevitable, of course. England are heading for a major football tournament. First sign: David Beckham tells a part of the media he is still willing to address without duress that his season in the company of Zinedine Zidane has made him so much a better player, a claim, let it be noted, without the support of too much video evidence.
Meanwhile, Paul Scholes, still just 29 and whose contribution to both England and Manchester United makes a molehill of Beckham's when you strip away all the hoop-la, says that he will not be totally surprised if he loses out to a Frank Lampard who has been in rampant form for Chelsea both at home and abroad.
This makes possible the bizarre scenario of an England midfield lacking Scholes but including Nicky Butt, whose season was so disappointing that he slipped behind Eric Djemba-Djemba and Kleberson at Manchester United and who, it has to be said, at his peak - which some would say was the 2002 World Cup when you almost needed more than one hand to count his incisive passes - was never quite half the player Scholes continues to be. Curiouser and curiouser, indeed.
It's true that Scholes has had a three-year scoring block for England, but his performance level has remained high and with him in the side there is always the potential for a clean, game-breaking eruption. Ask Arsenal, who so recently were blown away by Scholes' devastating intervention in the FA Cup semi-final.
Where will all this end? The drift of opinion, helped along by the voice of Beckham, is that Butt will start against France at the expense of either Scholes, who, whether or not he is scoring goals, is still one of England's banker talents, or Lampard, who amid all the uncertainties of life at Stamford Bridge improved his already promising game by roughly 100 per cent. What can you say except pass me a half-cup of the Mad Hatter's tea?'