I don’t, on the whole, do a lot of thinking. I’m not really designed for thinking, and if it were left to me certain essentials, such as gravity, would have remained uninvented. I would merely have rubbed my head, picked up the apple, taken a bite and remarked tetchily to my friend Isaac ‘Why do things always fall down? Why can’t they fall up for a change?’
He would have looked at me pityingly for a minute, run his hand through his long luxurious locks, sighed and hurried indoors, leaving me munching the apple.
I would probably have got all the way through the apple and be picking the core when he would return, carrying lots of sheets of paper.
‘You see’ he would start, ‘It’s because every particle attracts every other particle in the universe with a force that is proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between their centres.’
I like Isaac, and I don’t want to hurt his feelings, but he’s well and truly lost me here.
‘Oh. I see.’ I don’t but as I said, I don’t want to hurt his feelings.
‘Yes, look. I’ve written it all down. I’m calling it my Law of Universal Gravitation.’
He thrusts the papers towards me. ‘I’ve explained it all here.’
This would be a waste of time, as the year is 1665, and as a normal run-of-the-mill woman I doubt I would have been a fluent reader, outside of the Bible.
He knows this, but doesn’t want to make me look silly, so he helpfully points out the relevant bit with his finger.
‘Oh, right. Yes.’ I’m trying to sound as if I know what he’s talking about. ‘So that’s why things fall down?’
‘Yes.’ He smiles at me, proud of his discovery and even more proud that he’s managed to get me to understand it, he thinks!
‘But what about Australia?’
‘What do you mean – Australia?’
‘Yes. You know, the large lump of land that they call Terra Australis, the one that Dutch chap, Willem Jansoon, found.’
He’s looking a bit befuddled, so it’s my turn to explain.
‘He said it was the other side of the world, and everybody says the world is globe shaped.’
Isaac hasn’t quite caught up with me yet, so I carry on. ‘And if it’s globe shaped, and we are on the top, then Australia must be underneath.’
No, he still hasn’t caught up.
‘So in Australia everything must be upside down.’
His eyes are beginning to bulge.
‘So what is up here must be down there. So up here up is up, but down there up is down, so down there things wouldn’t fall down, they’d fall up.’
He gurgles and looks at his papers. Weakly he murmurs ‘It’s my Law of Universal Gravitation. It means that everything everywhere gravitates towards the centre of the earth. And as the earth is a globe, then everything gravitates towards the middle of it.’
He leans towards me. ‘So up and down are always up and down, no matter where you are in the world.’
I digest this information for a minute. ‘Well, why didn’t you say so? Shall we go in for a cup of tea? I think there’s still some cake left.’
Can you eavesdrop on history? Can you take a historical fact and insert yourself into the story?
After all, somebody must have been there, it might as well be you! You can be the protagonist, or who knows? You could even be the inspiration!
Dive into History’s pool and see what you come up with!
Treat the exercise as a sort of literary Yoga!
What fun, that you, Jos, were the inspiration for Newton’s Law of Gravity! No, I don’t understand it either.
Thanks Jill, and big thanks to John, who put it on for me and selected that superb photo!
An irreverent look at history, Jos! But I was inspired by that very idea for my book, and put my protagonist close to George Stephenson, 1825:
‘A lot of the engineers driving progress forward came out of the pit, didn’t they? No education, just intuition. Your Mr Stephenson, Miss Oldacre, for instance, he’s not educated, is he?’ Uncle Thomas drove his point forward with vigour.
Dorothy thought of the notes written by Mr Stephenson’s wife because his own grasp of letters and writing was so poor.
‘I don’t know often such intuition arises. Mr Stephenson clearly doesn’t trust it because he’s worked very hard to school his son. After working all day, he works half the night on his kitchen table, mending clocks and boots, to pay for Robert’s education.’
I do like taking a little trot down the What If road!
And later, a different side to it:
She thought of the great engineers leading the way forward, those discussed late into the night in Mr Stephenson’s cottage in Paradise Row after a day’s work. Talk of the Rennie brothers, the young Mr Brunel and Mr Blenkinsop. Mr Davy, even, who had blown himself up, just as Mr Stephenson had done, trying to invent a safety lamp. Learning the hard way, her father had said, even though Mr Davy had a university education and did his work in a laboratory, not on a kitchen table.
Some engineers had come from the pit, having all that mining experience behind them, with a feel for what was right and what was wrong. Others came from elite schools, and then university. Some had gone to France to gain their education. How could mill worker’s children strive for such heights? Surely school for them was more about keeping them further from poverty, for better understanding the world around them.
I like the idea of literary yoga!
I find it much easier than the real thing!