It’s 9pm on a Friday evening. I am falling asleep on the sofa finishing off a chapter of the book I am currently treating myself to. At this point in the day, I either lumber myself right into bed (after brushing my teeth OBVIOUSLY), or, with the little energy I am clinging onto, get started on a couple of morning jobs such as the washing up or responding to emails to save myself some trouble tomorrow. On this occasion, having decided I am too hot both physically and y’know PHYSICALLY (licks finger, presses it against butt cheek and makes a tsss sound), I make the decision to sit outside under the stars. I take myself onto the grassy mound that sits above the towpath and lean back into nature’s bristly (and possibly dog piss-ridden) mattress. I gently place in a single earphone. Two would be ridiculous. This certainly isn’t London anymore, but I still have a very rational fear that there could be someone in the dark out there to get me and it is a comfort to be aware of my surroundings.
I don’t think that I saw a single star throughout my time in London (except of course when I accompanied my dear friend Flo to a Charlie Puth concert in Brixton). Now, as I rest upon the river bank, with no concern for discarded needles or johnnies (like I say – no longer in London), I see the whole sky opening up, with dozens of stars above me. As I slowly become increasingly mesmerised, the dozens becomes hundreds and the hundreds become thousands. In truth, hundreds is probably more accurate, but the rhythm of the sentence would have been off without the latter addition and I couldn’t think of an increment between dozens and hundreds. In any case, the night sky is lit [“Lit”: 21st century slang meaning exciting or excellent].
It isn’t long before I see a shooting star and this ignites a little flame inside me. It starts with a minor trickle of excitement and then I catch myself smiling. The smile grows increasingly bold and I am grateful that this is a dark night in Tring so I am completely alone and no one can see me looking like a jolly prat (except for whoever is DEFINITELY out there hiding in the shadows and out to get me). The sight of the star even starts to make me chuckle. This part is analogous to the descent on a rollercoaster or a male right before ejaculation – I am riding an accelerating high and then suddenly find myself coming to an abrupt halt and entering a deep state of reflection. I have come out to see nature this evening. Nature says “good to see you George, it’s nice to be appreciated. Let me say cheers by presenting to you a special treat – BOOM: meteor.” It’s like something out of a lame (or excellent?) Disney movie, right? Boy lives on houseboat. Boy sits outside and watches shooting star with his best friend – the cuddly toy dog (for the record, all teddies stayed inside during this particular episode). But then I think to myself, just how many shooting stars have passed over my head without me ever realising? When was the last time I gave the night sky this much attention? Maybe this isn’t luck and actually quite generic – I’ve just not been noticing.
I have a PhD in General Relativity (let’s let that hang for a second… thank you). More precisely, I have a PhD in Asymptotic Charges in General Relativity. Less precisely, I know about black holes and stars and space and shit. I dare say that in such a field, you care as much for the sky above you as Jacob Rees-Mogg does for the peasants beneath him [Rees-Mogg: political figure – believes all people are beneath him and cares for no one – the metaphor stands]. I spent the entirety of those absurd four years either hunched over several sheets of algebra-smothered paper with one arm supporting the entire weight of my head or leaned into a computer going minutes on end without blinking as not to lose my place in the code – a nightmare with contact lenses (article coming soon: The alternating wink routine for those with dry eyes and high concentration computery jobs). The closest I got in my entire PhD to actually giving a toss about the content of the PhD – namely space – was during a conference in July last year, in which about a dozen PhD hopefuls, including myself, took ourselves into the wilderness of the Pyrenees mountains and stargazed. It is with regret that at the ripe age of 26, with an A* in physics A level, a BA and MMath from Cambridge University and one year of funding remaining from The Royal Society, that I realised for the first time in my life that stars are not static in the night sky. They move. This is because the Earth spins. Science.
It is 10pm. Tonight, I concentrate my focus onto one star in particular. It sits at the top of the trees behind me, tucked away at the outskirts of my peripheral vision. “Bye bye” I whisper, as it slowly totters behind the tree and out of sight. The tree didn’t move. The star did. Well, I did, but relatively speaking blah blah blah… experiment complete. Take that, flat-Earthers.
I have spent the past 27 years of my life looking down – whether it be at a computer screen, a phone screen, a page full of algebra, checking my flies are done up properly, pretending to have not noticed I am about to pass someone I know, but don’t want to talk to and so on. I am starting to realise that I have been missing so much. The world is full of blink and you’ll miss it moments. Imagine what we miss in the time we spend checking Instagram. Probably entire memoirs from nature and the world around us.
This is me deciding to turn my life around – or at least my line of sight.
Afterword: They say write drunk and edit sober and I am HAMMERED. This is the reason behind the explosions of capitalisation in the preceding text. I thought about removing them, but these are the ramblings of a man drinking alone on a Friday evening and I feel they rather add to the overall feel of the piece. Have a nice Saturday.
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