Andrew MacLaren-Scott's Blog, page 26
November 24, 2017
November 23, 2017
Look both ways
It is not a new idea, but the young cosmologist put it nicely, saying, as I recorded: "Imagine if space-time was so contorted that it bent the entire universe and all of its light back on itself, so that looking forward way into the distance we might actually see the back of ourselves, or at least the back of our galaxy; and even, if I may be so crazy, if looking backwards in time, as we effectively do when looking deep into the universe, might eventually reveal what is coming towards us in time, if what will happen has actually happened..."
"Eh, I understood the first bit but you lost me with that very last bit," I said, sipping a glass of Punk IPA.
"I think I may have lost myself too," she said, sipping her white wine, "but it is fun to lose ourselves sometimes, is it not?"
I liked her, and lunch in a university restaurant was very fine, but I did leave wondering if, instead of being much more clever than me, she might actually be completely, utterly, incurably, stark-staring, cuckoo-calling mad; as I may be too, of course.
"Eh, I understood the first bit but you lost me with that very last bit," I said, sipping a glass of Punk IPA.
"I think I may have lost myself too," she said, sipping her white wine, "but it is fun to lose ourselves sometimes, is it not?"
I liked her, and lunch in a university restaurant was very fine, but I did leave wondering if, instead of being much more clever than me, she might actually be completely, utterly, incurably, stark-staring, cuckoo-calling mad; as I may be too, of course.
November 22, 2017
Autumn Blue, Interview
"Why are you here?"
"To speak to you."
"But I don't want to speak to you."
"Oh. Well I said I would try."
"Sorry they sent you on a wasted journey."
"Well, I get paid anyway."
"Would they pay me?"
"They might."
"Well then I might speak to you."
"I'll get back to you."
"OK. Oh... and it was nice speaking to you. Ha ha."
November 21, 2017
Nobody knows me here
I broke my arm this week - first bone fracture in a long life
A rather strange woman asked me if I was married, and what I was doing "tomorrow"
A very small nurse, fitting a sling, said I had "a long way to fall"
A nuclear scientist somewhat lost his temper with me (unconnected to broken arm)
Three youngsters rolled their eyes at me in admirable synchrony
I was told that I was breaking the law
And a man in his 90's called me "son"
It is strange, working incognito, incommunicado
I am loving it
(even with a broken arm)
Much work to do
A long time to do it
A long way to fall
November 6, 2017
Settled
Quietly incognito, incommunicado, for a while
November 5, 2017
Nonsense
Many years ago, I received an anonymous death threat, or at least a statement that if I proceeded as I was proceeding I would soon die, from someone apparently somewhere in the USA in response to something that I had written (under my real name) in the esteemed science journal Nature about strange goings on in the timings of events out in the universe. I ignored it, and I did not soon die. A few weeks after that I received a phone call claiming to be from the brother of the legendary science fiction and science writer Arthur C. Clarke in which he said, "Arthur is sure you are onto something." Just at the end of that phone call my young son, aged about 7, and daughter, aged about 5, ran in to tell me there was "a UFO in the sky." It was just an orange light, moving oddly. Then something else happened far out in the skies on a notable anniversary of the things I had first written about in Nature. I published something about that again, and was told by a correspondent that I was nuts, even though I had not actually made any interpretation about anything at all - just reported recorded events that nobody disputed. Now, many years later, I have received a message telling me I should stop writing about things that I "don't know about," and on this same day I have received an odd message, apparently from Russia, about my officially silly novel Aileen the Alien saying: "Goodness! Fifty Shades of Scott and Alien Engineering. Truth written in jest." I also had a dream recently, in which a ghost told me that to it, I was the ghost. And my wife has awakened in the middle of the night, sitting up startled and afraid because a very small thin person with a very big head was looking at us from the dark doorway of our bedroom, then silently retreated; but of course she has concluded it was a kind of waking dream. And then something else happened, not in a dream, unless this life is a dream. A weird coincidence, of course. A strange conjunction of nonsense. Everything above is true. Everything we hold to be true may be nonsense. Someone told me long ago, during a conversation at 30,000 feet above the ocean, that if I wrote the truth nobody would believe me. Ah well, I'll have a lie down first, then I may start to write. If I fall silent then the bogeymen or bogeywomen may have got me. And if I manage to stumble my way to write the truth, nobody will believe me, but at least they may laugh. Normal service may resume tomorrow, but the truth is out there, or in here, somewhere. There is more. I have an idea.
