Stephen Hawking has died. Or been switched off. Or run out of charge. Whatever, the greatest genius Britain has produced since Isaac Newton and Bill Nicholson will roll his wheels no more. He is an ex-Lucasian Professor of Clever Stuff at Cambridge. And clever he was. Did you ever read ‘a Brief History of Time’? I did. The book that ‘popularised’ the unfathomable. I like science. I do science. I read science. And as I was reading that book I was following his concepts and felt like I understood them totally. Then as the book shut, they were gone in an instant. I could open it again and grasp (at straws?) it over again but it wouldn’t stick. So, in short, Stephen Hawking was much cleverer than me. Amazingly he was given 5 years to live in about 1965 due to his Motor Neurone Disease, but managed to hang on a while longer. And we’ve all seen the film and thus realise that he probably wasn’t the nicest man on the planet. But possibly the one who understood that planet better than anyone else. He never achieved his ‘grand unified theory’ but as most people can’t even spell it, he did better than was expected. He always wanted to join the colossal big stuff; planets shifting, time warping, gravity of black holes, with the microscopic, the energy produced in the nucleus of an atom. One equation that would encompass both ends of physics. But he failed. No cigar but he couldn’t have smoked one anyway in his condition. How he managed to father children is more than most people can fathom. I wonder what they’ll do with his ‘voice’ thingy?

Meanwhile right down here on planet Earth, on solid ground, Ahmed Hassan is in court for putting a bomb on a tube train. Which ignited but didn’t work properly, instead shooting a fireball down the carriage burning about 70 people and scaring everyone shitless. The actual detonation failed thus the bag of horrible sharp, nasty, rusty ‘shrapnel’ wasn’t deployed. Thankfully. And Hassan says he never wanted to kill anyone. The screws and bolts and knives in the bag were ‘just to look good’. Because “the idea of killing anyone never crossed my mind, never in my life”.

It takes a special kind of person to draw a line between creating a fireball in a crowded, confined space and claiming he wouldn’t murder on ethical grounds. You almost have to admire the little fucker. Then deport him.

Its Lila’s birthday soon. And as her present arrived her mummy and daddy decided to ruin the surprise and give it to her early. Where has that year gone???

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx