Monday, June 13, 2011

Sun go round the world

There were remarkably few arguments when my father was teaching me to drive, something which is generally warned against.

We did however both get into quite a state when it came to reversing round a corner:

… ... & then you turn the steering wheel in the opposite direction.

But – you turn it exactly the same way, said I.

Obviously, if you are proceeding in a forwards direction & want to turn the car into a road on the left, you turn the steering wheel to the left, & if you want to reverse round a corner to the left of the car, you turn the wheel to the right.

But, whichever the direction of travel, however the gears are engaged, the front of the car turns in the direction you turn the steering wheel, while the back turns in the opposite sense. When you are reversing to the left you want the front of the car to go right, so you turn the wheel in the same direction as you always use when you want the front of the car to go right.

It all depends on which way round you are looking at it. (Though it is advisable to be looking where you are going)


We were sorting laundry one day when my daughter was not yet three years old & Helping Mummy was a favourite game – clean laundry, pressed & folded, which just needed to be sorted into piles according to which cupboard or drawer they were destined for. We were doing this in a room with two beds, one double, one single.

Daughter wasn’t sure where one item should go. Oh, put it on the big bed, I said.

She put it down on the single bed.

Bemused, I said, No, I said the big bed.

She picked it up, had a think, then put it back down on the little bed, giving me a quizzical look.

Now my daughter of course understood the difference between large & small, big & little, & there was nothing at all in her demeanour, on this occasion at least, to show that she was exercising the tyranny of a Terrible Two to see how far she could go. She was genuinely puzzled.

Then I realised. The single mattress stood a good 6 inches higher off the floor, so from where she stood, her head so much closer to the ground, that was the big bed. She simply had not yet learned the adult convention that you judge the size of a bed by its width.

It all depends on your point of view & an understanding of how others see it.

I see the sun go round me, & my house. Since the latter, at least, stays firmly rooted to the earth, it is reasonable to assume that, or at least to talk as if, the sun goes round the earth. Although much in my daily life might not be possible if nobody understood that, looked at another way, it is the earth which goes round the sun, there do not seem to be any unfortunate consequences which flow from my own insistence on thinking & talking as if it were the other way round.

Even the scientifically trained talk about a sun which rises & sets.


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