Nothing to get hung about............
Current mood: sleepy
Category: Life

Fancy a spliff? A joint, a roll-up?

Just to make you feel relaxed after a hard day's work you understand.

Perhaps to help you switch off from all of life's little complexities.

Or perhaps you prefer a little beak, snow or cocaine.

And what about an Ecstacy to keep you going in a rave?

Nothing wrong with getting a little high is there. After all, it can't be as damaging as alcohol or tobacco, can it?

Whether it is or not it is against the law to do any of them. Except in Canada that is, or certainly Vancouver, British Columbia, where people quite openly smoke Pot despite it being illegal.

But here and in the US the law says that drugs are illegal and the cops spend a serious amount of time and resources chasing people either supplying or using them.

And while they are doing that, the drug barons get richer and richer.

Governments have for some time talked about the war against drugs – more so I suppose before the war against terrorism came along.

And it is a fact that drugs have destroyed people's lives – especially the more addictive and destructive like heroine, crystel meth and crack cocaine.

But alcohol and cigarettes have also destroyed lives and resulted in deaths and while smoking is an unpleasant, dirty and anti-social habit (I gave up 18 months ago!) I would defend the right of anyone to indulge themselves if they so wish.

Banning smokes would anyway be impossible to enforce.

And let's face it nearly all of us enjoy a drink. Sometimes we may even drink a little too much and become a harmless nuisance which everyone will forget the next day. We won't because we will have the hangover to enjoy for hours to remind us of our excesses!

And we know from history that banning booze is almost impossible to enforce too. Prohibition did little more than make a few gangsters quite rich while those who wanted to still enjoyed a drink if they knew where to go.

It is really all about freedom.

People should be allowed to do what they want providing it does not harm others.

I can almost hear some people throwing up their arms in disgust at the mere thought of it.

But why?

What is the difference between a  spliff and a cigarette?

What is the difference between coke and booze.

They can all kill you.

Surely it would be better to regulate drugs, tax them and sell them in licensed shops so that users know what they are getting and that there are no harmful substances included as a bonus which is often the case now.

It would put the drugs barons out of business at a stroke. It would also slash street crime at a stroke.

There would be no turf wars between rival gangs as there is now in both Britain, the US and Canada in which innocent bystanders get shot and killed.

It would, I admit, be a brave government that takes such a revolutionary stance because there will be those who will vehemently oppose it. But they are probably the same people who oppose anything that gives more choice.

In the end we are all responsible for our own actions.

If we drink too much we stand the risk of damaging our livers.

If we smoke we stand the risk of cancer, heart attacks and strokes.

We all know the risks and yet we carry on doing them.

It is an individual choice and decision that we all make.

That is what freedom is all about.

It is not about somebody trying to live our lives for us and dictating what we do or think.

It is time for us all to be treated like adults.

Legalise drugs. All drugs.

And legalise them now!

Currently listening : Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band By The Beatles

06:36 - 18 Comments - 12 Kudos - Add Comment

All in the name of love!
Current mood: moody
Category: Life

Wars, murder, theft and suicide – they have all been committed in the name of love. We have done and are still doing quite extraordinary things because we have met someone who has swept us off our feet.

Or it may have been one of these occasions when you meet someone and your eyes lock and you both know, you just know, that this is it!

And when love, or lust, or both has you in its grip is there anything you would not do to please your beloved. After all, you want her to look upon you as her hero. You want to dazzle her with your intellect, or if not your intellect your physique, your looks or your talent.

And what better way of impressing her than with a feat of heroism – or indeed one of sheer stupidity. A feat that you will look back on in future years and shiver at just how crazy it was at the time.

What would you do to prove your love – climb the highest mountain? Swim the deepest sea? Go bungee jumping? Jump out of a plane (even with a parachute!)? There are many ways suitors have sought to impress their lovers.

Or should you have to prove it at all in these enlightened days?

Come to that, is it women who should be proving it to us in this age of equality?

Literature is sprinkled with tales of challenges that lovers have had to endure – from Cinderalla, Little Mermaid, Rapunzel, The Dancing Princesses, to more modern tales. Love has always faced challenges and no doubt always will.

There can be few of us who have not done things in our youth that does not make us giggle – or even blush – when we look back on them.

Many years ago when I was in my 20s I took my then girlfriend for a row on the River Dee at the ancient city of  Chester.

It was a glorious day. The sun was beating down and the river was blue and inviting so we decided to have lunch and then a few drinks – quite a few drinks - before hiring a boat and setting off.

Now the River Dee is quite wide in parts and after a while of a leisurely rowing down the river the inevitable happened and I felt an urgent need to go to the boy's room.

Problem was that the boy's room was far away and we were in the middle of the river and I knew that I was going to have to take action – fast!

We had both had an ice cream earlier and I explained to my girlfriend that she was going to have to turn her back while I filled up the cartons and threw the contents overboard.

She gave me a look that spoke volumes and slowly shook her head in disbelief.

It took about eight refills of the cartons before my bladder had been emptied. The most difficult bit had been to stop and start!

At about this time a large boat full of tourists sailed past us and they evidently thought I was bailing out judging by the looks of concern on their faces.

Not the best way to impress I know.

Not quite in the mould of heroes either.

Strangely enough though she did eventually marry me.

Far more heroic were my grandparents who lived in separate villages a few miles apart. One night in 1898 they both climbed out of their bedroom windows and eloped!

It was a great scandal at the time and my grandfather was notorious. He didn't care. There always something a bit swashbuckling about grandpa.

They had seven kids and were married for 60 years until their deaths within a few months of each other.

Love has always faced challenges – maybe from parents, maybe because of money, maybe because there is nowhere to live. And then there are lovers who face the disapproval of authorities because of different ideologies or because they live in different countries or in different continents .

It is a fortunate couple these days that do not face problems of one sort or another.

The challenges are not so much set by lovers themselves these days but by circumstances.

And the heroes are those couples who survive the problems and the obstacles.

Your knight in shining armour is just the guy who sticks by you now.

As simple as that!

Currently listening : Quo By Status Quo Release date: 2005-02-07

06:41 - 14 Comments - 14 Kudos - Add Comment

Sex for sale
Current mood: blissful
Category: Life

She is beautiful. Long, slender legs which end in Armani shoes, straw coloured hair that hangs down in long, golden tresses and breasts that offer the certain promise of endless pleasure.

She turns every male head as she walks through the hotel lobby.

She is oblivious to the sensation she is causing as she walks towards you, a smile on her lips revealing pearly white teeth.

You feel your hear beating faster as she nears you. She could be a millionaire's girlfriend or a footballer's wife.

But she isn't.

She is yours for the night.

For the female vision is a high class hooker, a call girl, a 'working girl' and she does not come cheap. But she knows her business and the pile of cash you pay her will be worth it. An erotic night is guaranteed.

In every city and town the scene will be repeated. The girl may not be so stunning. She may not charge as much. The hotel may not be top class. But the service she provides will be the same.

Prostitution by whatever name it goes by is the same the world over.

Well……almost the same.

Because there is a big difference between the call girls and the street girls in that the former do it willingly and the latter are very often on drugs and in the grip of a pimp.

The plight of such girls is sad. They drift in and out of the courts, are often the victims of rape, beatings or even murder and all too often end their lives in misery once their looks, their youth and their usefulness has declined.

Call girls are a different matter though. They are women in business. They may have to pay an agency to be on their books but all too often these days they have their own websites and their own client list.

A recent programme on British TV revealed just how diverse the women in the business are, from a mother of four to students who are using the sex business to pay their way through college.

The mother, an attractive lady in her late 40s explained that her husband knows what her 'business' is and is cool about it. She said that she is more of a sex therapist and helps men overcome their fears and problems. It is her career choice.

The student was equally hard-nosed about it. She said bluntly that she can easily earn £2,000 ($3,400) a week for a few hours work which is rather better than working in a bar for £5.60 ($8.20) an hour.

But will she ever have a normal relationship after sleeping with so many men she was asked?

"It's only sex," she said scornfully. "It doesn't mean anything. I give them what they want and that's that.

"Anyway, I am not that unusual," she said.

"You can go downtown to a club any day of the week and pick up a girl who will do it for nothing. As far as morals are concerned what's the difference? I just charge that's all.

"I also get myself checked out regularly which is more than they do. You can pick up more than you bargain for with the amateurs."

And she does have a point. Sex has become something of a commodity almost. If you aren't getting it you are somehow strange or sad or maybe there is something wrong with you.

That is how people think all too often.

There was a move, a year or so ago, to create a red light district in my city  of Liverpool, England, where prostitutes could legally operate. People generally thought it was a good idea. The women would have medical checks; they would be protected and it would rid the city of kerb crawlers.

There was just one big problem.

Where should the district be situated?

Nobody wanted to live near a red light quarter and every reason known to man was trotted out.

In the end the idea was shelved.

What was not shelved was the problem.

It will take more than hypocrisy to resolve that.

Currently listening : Dark Side Of The Moon By Pink Floyd Release date: 1990-10-25

06:22 - 19 Comments - 12 Kudos - Add Comment

The ugly truth about Horner
Current mood: hopeful
Category: Blogging

Little Jack Horner. A charming Christmas tale you may think told and retold over the generations in many countries. A tale recited by kids with some glee since it tells of sticking thumbs in pies.

Little Jack Horner

Sat in a corner

Eating a Christmas pie

He put in his thumb

And pulled out a plumb

And said; "What a good boy am I!"

In fact, Horner was anything but a good boy and was nothing less than a thief whose treachery ended in a dreadful execution. The rhyme is anything but a harmless tale and goes back well over 450 years to turbulent times in England - like so many nursery rhymes recited by our kids.

In fact it goes back to the reign of King Henry Vlll, that infamous and much married monarch who defied the Pope to set up the Church of England because he wanted a divorce which the Catholic church refused to grant..

This led to him sacking the monasteries in 1536 which housed more than 80 religious foundations with more than 16,000 monks and nuns.

During the following five years they were all seized by the Crown and their land and buildings sold off or given to supporters of the king.

One of the last to go was the ancient Benedictine abbey of Glastonbury, now famous for its vast rock festival every year.

The tale of Glastonbury's dissolution is the origin of the nursery rhyme and involves the abbot, Richard Whyting, a rich and powerful figure who had been a signatory to the Act granting King Henry legal authority as head of the Church of England. Interestingly, it is also the reason why the present Queen is still head of the church.

Despite choosing the king over the Pope, an essential requirement for keeping one's head in 16^th century England, Whyting resisted the dissolution of Glastonbury Abbey for as long as possible.

After all, despite its great wealth it was also a place of great religious significance. The abbey was founded by Joseph of Arimathea – the man said to have donated his tomb for the burial of Christ's body after the crucifixion – to house the Holy Grail.

According to tradition Joseph arrived by sea and stuck his staff into the ground which flowered miraculously into the Holy Thorn. Legend has it that the tree still bursts into blossom every year on Christmas Day.

But I digress.

So Whyting chose to placate – bribe – the king and he sent his steward, Thomas Horner (Jack Horner of the rhyme) to Hampton Court palace with the deeds to 12 manor houses concealed beneath the crust of a large pie, posing as a gift.

In those days it was not uncommon for deeds to be hidden in transit to ensure they did not fall into the wrong hands.

Legend has it that on the way Horner delved into the pie and pulled out a plum piece of real estate, (the plum in the rhyme) Mells Manor House in the county of Somerset. In those days just having the deed made you the rightful owner and it was all Horner needed to become the new Lord of the manor.

The bribe, however, failed and Whyting was sent to the Tower of London to be questioned and then back to Somerset to be tried for treason. The treacherous Horner was one of the men on the jury who found Whyting guilty and he was sentenced to be hung, drawn and quartered. That is to say he was hanged until almost dead then disembowelled which were then set on fire in front of him and then he was cut into quarters. His head was displayed on top of the deserted abbey as a warning to others to obey the king.

There were no half measures in Tudor England!

The descendants of Thomas Horner still live at the manor he allegedly stole 400 years ago. They dismiss the legend as pure fantasy.

But they would wouldn't they?

Currently listening : Indie Anthems By Various Artists Release date: 2005-05-09

07:15 - 14 Comments - 14 Kudos - Add Comment

The naked truth!
Current mood: bouncy
Category: Life

Naked is a strange little word. It has such massive overtones. It implies sexuality, vulnerability and a complete lack of pretence. It also implies truth – the naked truth for example.

Naked is something you would whisper in your lover's ear. Naked has to do with self perception – modesty, shame, triumph even.

Our naked bodies are the real us – something that we only reveal to special people because without clothes the true person is revealed.

Taking our clothes off is something most people are sensitive about because the bodies we are born with may not conform to what we are supposed to look like – not according to the media, the images of men and women that are seen on movies, magazines and adverts.

And I am not talking about older people whose bodies have survived the ravages of time. Increasingly, the young are nervous about their image because the fact is that hardly anybody actually looks like the airbrushed and computer enhanced images we all look at every day.

Real people are knobbly. Real people have scars. Real people do not have perfect boobs, perfect muscles, long slender legs or a penis you could plough a field with. Nor do women have perfect vaginas which is why, no doubt, an increasing number are undergoing corrective surgery.

We live in an age of supposed perfection. If you do not measure up you are somehow a lesser person simply because your body does not conform.

It is one thing to stand naked in front of a mirror and eye yourself up dispassionately, noting the bits that do not please and the bits that do.

You could have all the surgery in the world and the result will be theoretical perfection but it will be a lie because it will not be you – the real you.

And even surgery will not stop the clock. Your body will age no matter how hard you may try to stop it and the surgery you had to gild the lily will have to repeated to preserve an increasingly false image – a real life portrait of Dorian Grey.

Most of us reveal ourselves naked to a person who is a lover, a partner, a wife, a husband. We do so in the knowledge that our lover will adore whatever we look like without our clothes.

Very few people make their bodies public property – most of us have difficulty understanding the mental gymnastics that actors and actresses must perform for the increasing number of movies that have nudity or sex scenes these days.

And the porn stars who strip off  and have simulated sex or even real sex are people we have difficulty understanding. The vast majority of us would never dream of being naked in public, let alone have sex in front of other people.

It has something to do with respect – respect for ourselves and our bodies and respect for other people too for that matter.

Our bodies are deeply personal and while some of us may be proud of what the good Lord has given us, others may well be shy or even ashamed.

They shouldn't be.

What we look like naked is not the whole story. It is only part of who we really are.

To discover the real us, you have look closer. You have look deeper.

For only then will you really find out who a person really is.

For our bodies are only the outer shell.

To the complex personality that makes us all so unique.

So look at yourself in a new way and not just at your nakedness.

For only then will you find the truth.

Currently listening : Rock Star By Various Artists Release date: 2001-08-28

06:47 - 19 Comments - 16 Kudos - Add Comment

Fat cats who brought down the West
Current mood: artistic
Category: News and Politics

I never actually thought I would see the day when the West went bust. But I just did last  Thursday. The impossible has happened and banks are going broke all over the place, money is scarce, the value of homes is dropping like a stone and commodity prices are soaring.

It is chaos.

In the US, here in the UK and in Europe highly paid executives of banks and other financial institutions are gazing into space behind their polished desks, scratching their hands and wandering what on earth they can do to plug the hole in the dam.

I never thought I would see the day when the American Federal Reserve would effectively nationalise a bank as it did last week.

And as the Bank of England also did here a few months ago.

A day when the Fed, the Bank of England and one or two other reserve banks squirted billions of dollars into the financial system to stop complete meldown and governments in both Britain and the US banned short selling.

Or to put it another way, banned speculators from betting that stocks would go down. Yes down.

In other words gambling. Gambling that has helped bring us all to the brink of absolute disaster.

Just last Friday a story was going round that three German bankers were suspended.

They were dubbed "Germany's stupidest bankers" over erroneous transfers of more than 500 million euros ($710m) to the bankrupt Lehman Brothers – the bank that went bust remember!

Two board members and a top risk control manager were suspended "pending final clarification of the incident" following a meeting of KfW's supervisory board meeting attended by top ministers including Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck, the bank said.

To simplify it yet again, they were gambling, hoping to make a few quick bucks but it backfired because they were too thick to realise that Lehman's was going bust!

It is a staggering thought that it is to such men that we have depended on to run our financial institutions.

But this crisis is not news to one man who six years ago warned of impending doom.

You don't get to be worth $62bn (£34bn) without knowing a thing or two, and it was in 2002 that Warren Buffett highlighted the systemic threat posed by the growing business in complex financial deals.

The target of the Sage of Omaha's ire were derivatives, which he labelled "timebombs" carrying "potentially lethal dangers". They are so named because they are essentially contracts between two parties gaining a 'derived' value from the performance of whatever they are based on - be it commodities such as oil, interest rates or currencies.

But during the past year, losses on complex investments - based on rapidly-tumbling US mortgages - have sent financial dominoes falling across the globe, with hundreds of billions written off worldwide. Buffett's chickens have come home to roost.

AIG, the US insurance giant rescued by the US Treasury last week with an £85bn (£46.6bn) loan, was massively exposed as a seller of credit defaults.

Buffett succinctly said that the range of derivative contracts available was "limited only by the imagination of man - or sometimes, so it seems, madmen".

He said it!

It is complex stuff but then I am not a bank executive paid to understand such things and neither are most of the readers of this blog.

We are all just the ordinary folk who have to try and live through the chaos that these greedy, stupid people have created.

What makes me angry and what should make you angry is that most of the people who caused this meltdown are still in their highly paid jobs.

People are losing their homes, people are struggling to pay their bills, people are struggling to run their cars but the men who brought the West to its knees are still there earning their fat cat salaries.

It is a total disgrace.

It is their greed and stupidity that has led us to this. They have achieved what Hitler and the Soviet Union failed to do.

They have brought capitalism and the West to its knees.

They should be indicted.

Right now.

Currently listening : High Voltage By AC/DC Release date: 2003-02-18

06:23 - 16 Comments - 14 Kudos - Add Comment

Psst..................got any secrets?
Current mood: blustery
Category: Life

Everybody has secrets don't they? They may not be big secrets. They may not be the sort of secrets that would get you hanged but they are secrets all the same.

The chances are they will be little secrets that you find just a mite embarrassing – things you have told nobody, not even your partner. Things perhaps you will hardly admit to yourself.

I am not, of course, talking about serious secrets like a secret lover or a crime you committed long ago. Not telling a partner about something like that would be unforgivable because the chances are they will find out quite by accident and that would be enough to evaporate trust between you.

But it happens of course.

It happens especially to people in the public eye who may think that the more unsavoury aspects of their past are well and truly buried. But they never are. They will emerge like long lost lovers to come back and haunt them.

The media these days are particularly skilled in unearthing tales about the rich and famous long before they were rich and famous. Things stars and politicians thought were buried forever. But they never are. Not totally.

No, the sort of secrets I am talking about here are those that everyone has. Things they may do in private. Things they think in private. Things they have never told anyone. It may be a secret passion, a secret desire, the blonde next door, or a food you eat in private. Bizarre? Yes of course it is but it really happens even though it is essentially harmless.

On the face of it you could argue that couples should have no secrets from each other. They should know everything there is to know. But should they?

Is it good or even healthy for two people to know absolutely everything about each other.

Shouldn't there be a few surprises scattered along life's long and twisted path?

Remember the old saying about familiarity breeding contempt – the more you know about somebody the less respect you have for them.

We have all seen the couples who have been married for many years who have quite simply run out of things to say to each other. They exist in a resigned silence. Each knows what the other is thinking so there is no longer any need to say anything.

There are no surprises left.

There are no secrets left either – if there ever were in the first place.

Of course what is also true is that people change. The vivacious 19-year-old you married is unlikely to be the same person you wake up next to 20 years later. Hopefully, you will both have changed in the same way but there are no guarantees.

Surprises are healthy for a relationship and so are secrets. Everyone should have that little bit of private space that has a 'no entrance' sign outside. Space that is yours and yours alone. Space for you to think. Space for you to dream.

Some thoughts can be shared. Some cannot. In the past people would write their innermost feelings in a daily diary. Thoughts that reveal how they felt about themselves, about others around them, about the people they came into contact with.

People may not have the time or the inclination to keep a daily diary any longer but the psychological release that a diary gives is still a healthy exercise.

Your private 'space' may be in the gym, in the garden, in a room painting or walking along a beach or a woodland path. There is no limit.

Everyone needs just a few secrets to keep themselves sane.

Everyone needs there own time in the increasingly complex and troublesome world we live in.

Its thinking time.

I enjoy watching aircraft take off and land. Not because I'm particularly nuts, although there are those who might argue about that! It just somehow has a romance about it.

Travelling to far-off places is the stuff of dreams.

When I was a boy I used to enjoy just watching trains for much the same reason.

It isn't so much the aircraft or the trains.

It was what they represent.

Freedom.

The stuff of dreams.

So enjoy your innocent little secrets and your private dreams.

Your own private little world you can escape to when it all gets too much.

Your dreams are private property.

And sometimes they even come true!

Currently listening : The Electric Saxophone Release date: 2001-05-29

06:29 - 18 Comments - 16 Kudos - Add Comment

I’m celebrating!
Current mood: happy
Category: MySpace

Yes, I'm celebrating because overnight saw the 20,000th hit on the blog. I have to confess to being quite astonished by this milestone because when I started it I never thought people would even want to read it.

It is, of course, you the readers that have made the blog a success. Without you there would be no blog because there would be no point! I count myself very, very lucky to have so many loyal readers, many of whom have become very valued friends.

And of course, quite apart from those of you who do comment and who I have come to know, there is an army of other people out there who read the blog anonymously.

I want to give you all a sincere thanks. Even though the pressure of college work is steadily mounting I will keep the blog going to show faith with my friends and readers.

Thank you all once again for making 20,000 hits a reality.

Mike Rickett

Currently listening : Rio By Duran Duran Release date: 2001-07-03

06:28 - 23 Comments - 20 Kudos - Add Comment

It’s men who are to blame!
Current mood: rejuvenated
Category: Romance and Relationships

It is finally official – men are to blame for everything. It is something women have known for centuries of course but without any real reason for knowing why. They just 'know' we are to blame. It is one of the inevitabilities of life like the night following day.

And mostly we accept the blame for rows, for things going wrong, foe leaving our trousers on the carpet or for letting the unwashed dishes pile up.

We will shrug our shoulders in a resigned kind of way, go and have a few beers with the boys and forget all about it.

But now Swedish researchers have proved what women have suspected all along, that it really is all our fault.

It seems it can all be attributed to our genetic make-up, according to a study linking a common male gene to relationship problems.

It is, according to the research, the reason why some men are always at the centre of stormy relationships and bond less to their wives or girlfriends, a team at Stockholm's Karolinska Institute said.

"There are, of course, many reasons why a person might have relationship problems, but this is the first time that a specific gene variant has been associated with how men bond to their partners," Hasse Walum, one of the researchers, said in a statement.

The team found that men who carry one or two copies of a variant of the gene often behave differently in relationships than men who lack the gene variant, called allele 334.

"The incidence of allele 334 was statistically linked to how strong a bond a man felt he had with his partner," the statement said.

So it is our genes after all. It should actually come as a relief because it means that those men who abuse their kids and beat-up their wives, really can't help it. They aren't really total bastards as you may have thought.

And if you believe that you will believe anything!

But the researchers say that men who had two copies of allele 334 were twice as likely to have had a marital or relationship crisis in the past year than those who lacked the gene variant, it said.

But there's more.

It isn't just behaviour that is affected, it is also sex.

Indeed, the wives or girlfriends notice the difference say the research team.

"Women married to men who carry one or two copies of allele 334 were, on average, less satisfied with their relationship than women married to men who didn't carry this allele," Walum said

It all brings a new meaning to feeling too tired for sex – or too stressed – or too busy. In future he will be able to moan pitifully that it is his genes.

"Not tonight honey my allele 334 is acting up again."

And there really is no answer to that is there?

The real clincher, however, comes low down in the report where Hasse Walum stresses that the effect of the genetic variation was relatively modest and could not be used to predict with any real accuracy how someone would behave in a future relationship.

So in other words we should not take too much notice of it, unlike Martin Ingvar, a professor of neurophysiology at Karolinska Institute, said the results were "very exciting."

"These are original findings which shed light on the fact that all of our behaviours are influenced by both nature and nurture. Even complex, cultural social phenomens such as marriage are influenced by a person's genetic make-up," Ingvar said.

He was probably thinking of voles when he said that because the gene in question controls the production of a molecule receptor for vasopressin, a hormone that is found in most mammals.

The same gene has previously been linked to monogamous behaviour in male voles, a mouselike rodent.

So there we have it.

Us guys are really mice at heart.

But we always knew that didn't we?

Mine's a pint thanks!

Currently listening : Red Carpet Massacre By Duran Duran Release date: 2007-11-13

06:32 - 26 Comments - 22 Kudos - Add Comment

In the beginning................
Current mood: breezy
Category: News and Politics

In the beginning there was nothing.

No stars. No planets. No light. No darkness. No sound. No matter. Not even a Starbucks!

Nothing.

Then, in the smallest fraction of a second, there was a single point of light that came from nowhere.

A point of light that within millionths of a second had exploded to create the vastness of the universe.

The Big Bang had arrived.

Around 13.7 billion years ago – give or take a day or two!

And the rest – as they say – is history.

And in Europe they are about to attempt to create creation itself in a vast machine on the Swiss French border called Hadron Collider.

What they are trying to recreate is what happened a trillionth of a second after the universe was created. For that tiny moment, it is believed everything was molten plasma. This cooled to create everything we see around us. The hope is that by remaking the moment, in miniature, the scientists will be able to see things that are invisible now.

The first great discovery they hope to make is to find the 'God particle'. It is believed we have only detected a quarter of the particles in everything. We don't, for example, know why things have mass. (To get a feeling for what that is, hit yourself over the head with an inflatable hammer, then a real one. The one that hurts has more mass.)

 In 1964 Professor Peter Higgs of Edinburgh University predicted an unseen particle provided mass (its official name is a Higgs boson). The hope is it will be detected for the first time. Other possible revelations include so-called dark matter, which in theory "stretches through space like an invisible skeleton". And then there is the 'theory to explain everything' – the elusive Unified Field theory that Einstein spent 30 years trying to find.

So scientists are as excited as a bunch of schoolboys. Others are scared stiff that the experiment may create a black hole and we will be sucked into oblivion. So scared were they, in fact, that they went to the European Court to attempt to stop the experiment.

But not everybody was convinced that the universe was created by the Big Bang. English scientist Fred Hoyle was utterly convinced it was wrong to his dying day in 1982.

He believed that the universe always had existed and always would exist and that stars and planets were constantly dying as well as being created. He called it Steady State and it does have a lovely symmetry and simplicity to it.

It does, of course, imply that the universe is infinite and we all have a problem trying to imagine that. Our brains are just not built to imagine such staggering thoughts.

But Hoyle's theory was discarded when it was discovered that the universe is expanding – galaxies are hurtling away from each other at an incredible rate. And for that to happen must mean that there had to have been a cause – a beginning – and hence the Big Bang, ironically so named by Hoyle himself.

And yet, maybe there are things that worry me about it all in those small hours of the night when your mind wanders around the universe.

What caused that tiny point of light in the first place?

How could it just 'appear' out of nowhere?

And if the universe is expanding, when will it stop?

And will it one day shrink back to a point of light again?

Answers please on a postcard to Michael.

In a Hard Rock Café at the end of the Universe.

Currently listening : Queen - Greatest Hits, Vols. 1 &2 By Queen Release date: 1995-11-14

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