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I have been verified on Twitter. Weirdly I never asked to be and in fact, always quite liked the fact that I wasn’t, opening up the possibility that out there was a very persistent and determined person who had somehow got away with pretending to be me for over a decade. But now the dream is over. Like Rod Hull, I am me. It’s a sad day.
In all the other field based excitement I’d forgotten to update on the mystery hare/grouse/bit of rubbish. The day after I first saw it the shape had gone, which suggests it was a living creature, though as we know, things can inexplicably move one way or the other on these fields.There were birds out on that part of the field, but they were all moving around and didn’t look like hare/bird hybrids.
Tonight though the hare shape had returned and was standing stock still. Had I somehow missed it on my other trips. No. The hare then moved and started cavorting and boxing with another hare. It was beautiful and calming to observe. I know I’ve said it before, but you never got this in Shepherd’s Bush. Though I haven’t seen any shitting homeless people in Hertfordshire, so it’s swings and roundabouts.
I think it’s more than likely that the mystery shape I saw was a hare. It looked like a hare most of the time and just stood still for longer than the ones I saw today, Though there’s a possibility that I saw Recksycortal, the legendary Hertfordshire shape-shifting hare-grouse god whose appearance forewarns you of great disaster. Either way the Universe is magical.
I have been listening to the God Equation by Michio Kaku, which is a good introduction to the history of physics and even though it’s clearly aimed at the layman a lot of it is still confusing to me, but it gives you a stab at understanding the journey that human understanding has taken in discovering how the Universe works, though I doubt it will tell us why it’s here or who made it or if the Universe is finite then what is beyond wherever it ends and what is beyond where that ends and so on to infinity.
It made me think about how I nearly did Physics for A level (in fact I did almost a whole term of it, before switching to English, having realised that I wanted to study history at University and not Maths). I may have been pretty adept at science and maths in those days, but my brain can’t wrap round most of it any more. Even at the time I am pretty sure I had no idea what calculus was actually for, though I managed to work out how to answer all the questions I’d be asked about it (eventually - I did two maths A levels and think I only cracked calculus in the Further Pure Maths that I did in the second year of Sixth form).
What a bold and life changing decision it was to change subjects - and I remember it being discombobulating and strange trying to catch up on the poetry of Keats which I’d missed while feeling sad and out of place in the Physics lab.
Anyway listening to a book about quantum physics and the universe on a molecular level whilst watching hares punch each other, was a great sensory overload. I may not understand the physics, but it’s amazing to be part of a species that has managed to unravel the secrets of the Universe even this far. Even if it’s a species that sometimes can’t tell a rodent from a bird from a lump of wood.
We went to get the car washed today (they charged me extra because the car was so dirty, but the joke’s on them because I was going to pay them extra anyway). We chatted about how someone at Ernie’s nursery had had chicken pox and I tried to explain what it was and how it wasn’t great, but it was something that had to happen. We looked round the garden centre as I’d promised the kids some sweets and we were served by a teenage cashier with acne on his face. “Has he got chicken pox?†asked my daughter in a very loud voice. Luckily the cashier laughed at this.
