Between the ages of 10 & almost 16 I had a wonderful three-quarter bed inherited from a great aunt. Complete with goose feather mattress. Sadly there was not room for it in the new house, so it went to a new owner.
I found myself remembering that mattress yesterday, looking at the dramatic sky over the Pennines. A bit of everything.
Big black angry clouds, lots of brown clag underneath, here & there a gap showing a glimpse of watery blue sky & sunlit fluffy white or silver cumulus. These clouds looked so comfy among all the rest, I could imagine myself curling up & snuggling down for a snooze until the drama passed.
The story that Einstein, as a child, imagined himself riding through space on a beam of light has, for some reason, been quoted a lot recently by all sorts of people, mainly to illustrate that science is not the cold, hard, clinical, pursuit that some creative types imagine.
Anyone can imagine themself riding that sunbeam.
The trick is then to work out the math.
I know I cant do the math but I wondered what I might achieve, if I could. What new scientific insight could sleeping on a cloud bring to the world?
Then I thought, probably much the same as imagining yourself in a tumble drier being tossed up & down, thrown across space while performing cartwheels.
