Black Hole

About 10 minutes ago, the Large Hadron Collider was powered on. I sat on the couch with my laptop perched on the arm. Lewis dumped his cup of water on me and I froze. I shouted for tea towel to absorb the water while my ears were glued to BBC Radio 4 doing the countdown. I was at the same time relaying to my husband what the French and English-speaking people were saying, including Andrew Marr's. Too much excitement!

But in bed this morning, I was ranting. '£5billion pounds! Think how that could help humanity! They spend that much just to satisfy scientific curiousity and yet there are people in the world who can't even pull their hair because of hunger? How could you justify that?'

My husband kept still and quiet, staring up the ceiling, possibly thinking, 'oh here we go again!' Then he said, 'Britain gives CERN £120million pounds every year.'

Then I said, 'go on Zak, get dressed'. I thought, do I really have to worry about these huge things beyond my comprehension? If black holes are inadvertently created, as some people claim, then earth would be sucked from within, and there's nothing I or you could do about it. I might be able to continue supervising Zak and Lewis get dressed, or not.

Then my husband asked how long it would take for earth to disappear if the collider goes wrong, the expert in me confidently answered: 4 years. He said, 'don't worry, we'll all be dead by then'.

When Zak and husband left for school, husband said, 'it's 8.39. I'll see you later, unless the black hole appears!'