Me And My Big Mouth

Interview: Jah Wobble

Jah Wobble was a founder member of Public Image Ltd and went on to have a successful solo career including the Mercury nominated Rising Above Bedlam album. His many musical projects range from setting the poetry of William Blake to music through to working with Brian Eno and, more recently, the critically acclaimed Chinese Dub Orchestra.

He has just published his autobiography, Memoirs of a Geezer: Music, Life, Mayhem, which I reviewed a couple of weeks ago. It is one of the best rock memoirs you'll read. I am more than a little chuffed to welcome him to the blog today.

SP: One of the strengths of the book is that it is written very much in your voice. You tell it like it is. Was there much you had to leave out of the book for legal or personal reasons?

JW: No, not as much as I feared, in fact hardly anything....I think that initially there were about 40 points raised by the lawyer....these were quickly whittled down to about 10. Out of those half were rewritten in a way that kept the lawyer, myself and John Williams the editor happy, and half, after a bit of debate were left as they were.

SP: How much fun was it slapping Sean Hughes on Never Mind the Buzzcocks?

JW: Actually I felt quite bad afterwards...I was in my late thirties when it happened and I knew in my heart of hearts that that sort of behaviour, in spite of his appalling attitude, was well past its sell by date. It is very difficult, especially as you get older to justify violence of any kind, no matter how many plaudits you get for it.

SP: I am a bit younger than your good self and first came across your work while working in HMV Southend when Rising Above Bedlam came out. My favourite track of yours is a B-side from that time, Josey Walsh. I notice it ended up on the I Could Have Been A Contender collection so presumably is a song you are keen on. What can you remember about how that song came about?

JW: Yes you're right that song is a favourite of mine. The actual name Josey Walsh is fictitious. My lyrics tell the tale of a woman who has had a terrible childhood....suffered all sorts of abuse and ended up as an alcoholic, with her kids taken into care and all that. She makes many attempts to get into recovery, but just cannot make it. In the end she dies a horrible, lonely premature death, typical of chronic alcoholics.. The song tells her that the struggle is over, and that she is loved....indeed she always was. It’s not even a question of her needing to be forgiven or anything.

SP: How do you feel about the changes in the music industry in this newfangled digital age?

JW: Equal measure of good and bad (so far). On one hand it’s helped devalue music in the eyes (and ears) of many people....on the other hand the technology is heaven sent for a maverick figure like me....I have a great deal of autonomy. I can still make an ok living, on my terms. Having said that, in comparison to how it was the economy of the music business is far closer to a car boot sale now than most people would imagine. But at least production costs have tumbled dramatically, to (almost) match the low dealer prices that one now receives per unit sold. I think now that everyone realises that the music business’s troubles were the thin end of the wedge in regard to the internet and copyright infringement. In regard to the internet the genie is well and truly out the bottle. It’s going to be very interesting to see where it all goes.

SP: Your Chinese Dub project has been very well received, will this be something you continue with or is there, as often happens with you, something completely different in the pipeline?

JW: I’ve got a new album called ‘Welcome to my World’ lined up, as well as a digital only EP called ‘Electro Retro vs. Late Impressionist period Dub’ (really)...plus I’m in pre production of an album of Japanese stuff. My wife Zi-Lan and I would love to do Chinese Dub again, however we want it to be even bigger and better than it was....I really want to avoid doing ‘Chinese Dub Lite,’ (otherwise known as the ‘cash in’).

SP: I'd love to get a couple of music recommendations from you while I've got you here. Any good stuff I should be listening to?

JW: Harold Budd’s The Room is my fave at the moment. I tend to listen, when ‘off duty’, to composers like Arvo Part, Gorecki and Tavener. Similar to Harold they are regarded as minimalists....whereas they are seen as ‘Holy’ Harold is one of the originators of the American (Californian) School of minimalism. But funnily enough I would wager that Harold is probably holier than them all! He really is a very good bloke.

SP: And I always ask visitors to my blog to suggest a favourite book, what would you pick?

JW: The Jenny Diski book was the best thing that I read lately . I’ve also been steaming back into the The Upanishads recently. After a dose of the Upanishads I always feel inspired to go about ‘my’ business in proper fashion, i.e. the ‘My’ and ‘Me’ aspects get put in their proper place. Atheists will probably shudder reading that....”oh no!” they will exclaim “Another nutcase thinking that he is doing the Lord’s work!”

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Memoirs of a Geezer: Music, Life, Mayhem is out now and if you are thinking of buying it then I highly recommend chucking in a copy of I Could Have Been A Contender, his 3 disc career retrospective, as well. The perfect combination.

Write Lines

I was on BBC Radio Oxford last night alongside some far lovelier people talking about getting published, selling your books and plenty of other stuff.

The show is called Write Lines and is the brainchild of broadcasting legend, and former Book Swap guest, Sue Cook> It has proved very popular if the Twitter following and blog reaction is anything to go by.

Last night was the final episode of 4. There are plenty of radio shows that cover books but very few that talk about writing and the writing world in any detail. I think Sue might be on to something with Write Lines and I hope to hear it on Radio 4 soon.

In the meantime you can listen to us all witter on via the swanky BBC iPlayer.

Advent Calendar

Every day between December 1st and Christmas Day itself I will be posting short suggestions for books to brighten up your festive season.

Some will be old, some will be new. Some would make for ideal gifts, others are entirely for personal use.

The intention is to recommend 24 books that you might otherwise have overlooked. They are unlikely to be on promotion in your local WH Borderstones and probably haven't been noticed by the reviewers and literary editors who are paid to bring great books to your attention.

It is an entirely selfish and personal selection but I hope some of you will find a few books to add to your own wishlists or to give to others.

A Song For Sunday

Lucklucky by Veda Hille.

What Are You Doing Thursday Night?

Well if you are at a loose end and anywhere near the Windsor area then there are a couple of decent book events going on this Thursday 3rd December.

At the Firestation Arts Centre, home of our lovely Book Swap, Rick Wakeman will be appearing to talk about his new book Further Adventures of a Grumpy Old Rock Star and, one would presume, the book that came before it. Now better known for appearing on Countdown and Grumpy Old Men he is, of course, a prog rock legend and I cannot imagine he will be anything other than thoroughly entertaining. You can get hold of tickets here for a fiver.

If five pounds is a bit rich for your tastes then how about coughing up £3 to meet three different authors. That is, I am pretty sure, a mere one pound per author. Waterstone's in Windsor are holding a private shopping evening from 7.30pm on Thursday and wandering around the shop being all authory and presumably clutching pens with which to sign books will be Clare Mulley, Patrick Bishop and Stephen Grey.

Clare is the author of The Woman Who Saved the Children: A Biography of Eglantyne Jebb the Founder of Save the Children, Patrick has written Ground Truth: 3 Para Return to Afghanistan as well as other works of military history old and new and Stephen is responsible for Operation Snakebite: The Explosive True Story of an Afghan Desert Siege. They sound like a fine bunch of individuals and you get to meet them while at the same time being able to do some Christmas shopping without any of the hoi polloi to get in your way. To reserve a place you will need to call the shop on 01753 856456.

I might see you there.

Stuff

Martha borrowed my new Flip camera and decided to annoy her brother in charming fashion.

Those nice people at Completely Novel are offering readers of this blog 10% off the price of a personalised classic. Editions of Alice in Wonderland, A Christmas Carol, The Jungle Book, Pride & Prejudice and Great Expectations can be pimped to feature names and pictures of loved ones. I suspect these would work best for kids or as an ironic present. I am very tempted to get some for Nick Cohen and Tim Adams. You can check them out right here. If you enter the promotional code XMASPROMO at the checkout you will get the discount.

And, don't forget, if you are in the mood for some Christmas shopping the kids clothes site Nippaz With Attitude will give you 20% off any order if you enter Big Mouth at the checkout.

And if that wasn't enough you can still get a discounted subscription to the wonderful Stack Magazines service by clicking here.

Right, I am off to choose my next Song for Sunday. Have a good weekend.

Aftermath

We all had a great time at the Firestation Book Swap last night. Our guests, Richard Asplin and Robert Hudson, were on top form and common consensus seems to be that it was the best yet. Thank you to everyone who came and especially those who baked cake specially.

For future reference, anyone who bakes cake or biscuits for the Swap gets in for free. As does anyone who arrives in a slanket. Someone did bring a slanket along on the night which I happily modelled on stage.

 

Photo courtesy of Ben Johncock, but as you can see he wasn't the only person taking a snap. They'll probably be all over the papers this weekend.

Richard and Robert - who were brilliant by the way, did I mention that? - popped on over to the Beat website to do interviews just before the big night. Well worth a read they are too.

The Book Swap for grown-ups take a Christmas break now but, diaries permitting, we will be throwing in a free one for kids (probably ages 8 and over) on December 20th. Authors and details to be confirmed.

And normal service will be resumed in January. More anon.

Interview: Robert Hudson

Robert Hudson is the author of the oddly impressive The Kilburn Social Club, a book about a football club set in a slightly alternative version of Britain. It is full of the trials and tribulations of the eccentric family who own the club, their business partners and enemies, the players, staff and fans. The cover blurb describes it as Footballer's Wives meets The Forsyte Saga which isn't quite right but as you can see from this interview, neither myself nor the author can do much better.

What I can say is that it is a highly original debut novel that should appeal to sports buffs and haters alike. I am pretty sure you won't have read anything quite like it. In a good way.

SP: I really enjoyed the book but find it hard to do it justice when trying to explain it to people. Can you help me out with a few sentences to describe your novel?

RH: I actually find it very difficult too. At it's simplest level, it's a straightforward piece of literary fiction about a group of friends living in London for seven years in their late twenties and early thirties, and facing up to the fact that people shift in and out of their lives, and their aspirations change, and they learn to compromise on some things and decide not to on others. Football's a great background because the novel is partly about time and football has an inbuilt annual rhythm. It also has a very particular place in British public life - people love it, hate it or are bemused that other people care so much, but they all have a view - which makes it suitable for big storytelling, and means I could write in an old-fashioned, romantic narrative register, which is something I really wanted to try.

SP: Have you had differing reactions to the book from football fans and people who don't like the beautiful game?

RH: Slightly, though it's very hard to be schematic. Half my friends hate sport, and many of them were worried they wouldn't like it. Most of them, and the (especially female) reviewers who liked it, quickly saw that it was a story about people, not football. My favourite early review from a friend was, 'I don't mean to be rude, honestly, don't take this the wrong way, but it's surprisingly sensitive.'

My sporty friends tended to have to get past their surprise that they were being inveigled into reading a book that was more tangentially about games than they expected. After reading it, lots of my hockey team have bought it for their dads for Christmas. This seems like a good sign

SP: You play around with a number of narrative styles in the book - letters, newspaper articles, different perspectives and even sections narrated by a football - which was the most fun to do, and which the most tricky?

RH: The letters and the chapters narrated by footballs were the easiest - essentially anything which I could write completely in a voice. Though, since the whole book is almost entirely written from one or other of the characters' perspectives, I was mostly in character when writing. Unreliable narration is fun, basically.

The hardest parts were the descriptions of football matches, which are not totally unlike descriptions of sex, from a technical perspective, in that sport is intense, emotional and attracts purple cliche. Some sports fans have said they liked these descriptions, which I'm very pleased by.

SP: OK, fess up. This whole alternative football universe thing. Was it just a way to avoid having to include real clubs and real players - a neat research shortcut?

RH: Bang to rights! I quickly came up with some better justifications, though. I didn't have any time to do research, which was a fact I built into the planning process. Almost immediately I saw why this was a good thing (post-operative rationalisation is very reassuring): I didn't want readers to be distracted by reality. I didn't want people constantly thinking, 'That's not how a football club works', or 'Alex Ferguson would never say that.' The book isn't a satire; KSC is not Arsenal or 1970s Liverpool, though at some deep level I am sure it draws on both, and everything else I know about real-world football.

SP: You've included an impressive cast of characters in the novel, who was your favourite to write?

RH: Esther. She's the funniest, basically. I really do feel sorry for her. I enjoyed Zondi's mythosphere too, which was something I built out of various real ones.

SP: Do you know if any football players have read it?

RH: I don't know. I would love it if they had.

SP: I always ask guests at the blog to recommend a good book. What would you suggest we all add to our reading piles?

RH: Avoiding things everyone already knows about: EM Delafield's The Diary of a Provincial Lady is the funniest book I've ever read; Margaret Macmillan's Peacemakers is a brilliant, tragicomic explanation of why the world is like it is; Kyril Bonfiglioli's The Mortdecai Trilogy is Lovejoy-meets-Chandler glorious; The Blind Side and Friday Night Lights are unbelievably moving books about America, prejudice and inequality told in the gripping rollercoaster sentimental style of US sportswriting, which is better than ours by a million miles.

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Hopefully that has proved suitably intriguing and you will check out The Kilburn Social Club which is out now and published by Jonathan Cape.

If you would like to meet the lovely Robbie in person then he will be one of our guests at the Firestation Book Swap tonight. Do come along.

The Curious Incident Of The Badge In The Post

I received this in the post on Monday.

It is a badge with a quote from Haruki Murakami on it. It came from The Literary Gift Company who seem to have all manner of book related gubbins on their site. I have no idea if it was sent to me as a gift from a secret admirer or whether someone at The Literary Gift Company thought I might plug the site. If it is the latter then it worked as I am going to witter on about it for a bit right now.

They have things made out of books like this rather fetching handbag.

Some really cool posters, of which this is my favourite.

 

And one of the most wonderful literary related items I have ever seen. A paperback-scented bubblebath. Apparently it smells like an English satire from the 1970s. Then there are mugs, coasters, bracelets, clocks, aprons and all manner of other things that you wouldn't necessarily associate with books.

I managed to kill a good thirty minutes at work just clicking through the many gifts. I think I have spotted some potential Christmas presents amongst them.

And thank you for my badge, whoever you are.

Reading Backwards

Please pay attention to this next sentence, I will put it in bold to help you out.

Charles Baxter is as good a novelist as Anne Tyler.

Got that?

Now, could some of you please buy his books? He sells bugger all over here. Most of his stuff isn't even in print in the UK (although you can get hold of them all pretty easily online). It is a fucking tragedy that he isn't more widely read.

They love him in the States, and they are usually so wrong about so many things. Not this though. Over there he has been nominated for the National Book Award and critics have compared him to William Trevor and Alice Munro, even Chekhov.

They are bang on the money when it comes to Baxter.

I have been rationing myself with his books. I have managed to get hold of most of them now but try to limit myself to one a year. He doesn't write that many and I am scared of running out. If I go slow he may stay ahead of me.

I recently read his debut novel, First Light. It tells the story of Hugh and Dorsey, a brother and sister born and raised in a small Michigan town. When we first encounter them they are in their 40s, Dorsey and her family visiting with Hugh and his. There is an obvious disconnect, they have grown apart over the years, their lives taking very different courses. Each subsequent chapter jumps back in time. Some just a couple of hours, others many years. By the end of the book, with the young Hugh visiting his new sister at the hospital, most of the blanks have been filled in.

Baxter is brilliant at portraying flawed characters and helping you to understand them. He can do that thing that Anne Tyler and Richard Yates do so well - sum up a person's life, or capture a relationship in a single sentence. He is an exquisite writer.

And it is not just me that thinks so. This first novel drew praise from JM Coetzee - 'A book one reads with pleasure from the first word to the last' - and Paul Auster - 'gradually we begin to understand that Baxter is telling our own story'.

With Tyler on the verge of canonisation by the literary world and Yates growing more popular every year since his 'rediscovery' I would like to think it is only a matter of time before we wake up to the brilliance and quiet genius of Charles Baxter.

The Nervous Breakdown

Novelist Brad Listi, who just happens to be the author of the acclaimed Attention. Deficit. Disorder published by The Friday Project, has relaunched his wonderful online literary journal The Nervous Breakdown.

Featuring contributions from dozens, if not hundreds, of established and up-and-coming writers it is an entertaining and thought-provoking web magazine which I have bookmarked for some time and check out pretty much daily.

The new revamped version is really rather swank and I think most of you would enjoy it very much. Do pop on over if you get a chance.

If you are a published author and fancy contributing to TNB then you can contact Brad via the site. He is always on the lookout for new writers and would love to have more from the UK.

A Song For Sunday

Why Do You Let Me Stay Here by She & Him.

Bits & Pieces

Adam Boulton from Sky News writes about our Crap MPs book on his blog.

David Baddiel is photographed with a copy of The Atheist's Guide to Christmas while out and about with Morwenna Banks and Jo Brand.

Richard Asplin will be one of the guests at Thursday's Firestation Book Swap and he talks about the event on his website. Well worth checking out, he compares me to Noel Edmonds.

Our other guest is Robert Hudson, who also has a splendid blog where he tries to convince people to come along.

You can get tickets here.

Permanent Bedtime

I came across this neat little website via @orbific on Twitter.

It is a permanent recording of the Shipping Forecast and the Sailing On music.

Now you can relive those wonderful sleepy just-about-to-nod-off moments at any time of the day.

This Is England

I first came across the photography of Chris Steele-Perkins with his book Tokyo Love Hello, a collection of images taken in and around that amazing city. His wife is Japanese so he knows his way around the place but obviously brings that outsider's eye to everything he sees and records.

Which, perhaps surprisingly, is a quality he also brings to this wonderful new book collecting photographs from his 40 year career. All are taken in England, the country he came to from Burma when he was a toddler (which may explain the slight detachment) and form a fascinating visual history.

I suspect I found England, My England: A Photographer's Portrait particularly interesting because the images included span the period I have been on this earth. The people, the places, the fashions spark memories and that meant I was genuinely drawn in. The shots from the 70s reminded me of growing up, visiting my grandparents in London and holidays at Butlins. Happy days.

England, My England: A Photographer's Portrait is published by Northumbria University Press (who are knocking out some really interesting and diverse books) and would be a splendid addition to your coffee table or the posh bit of your bookshelves.

Guest Blogger: John Barlow

My Life in Pork

A few years ago I got myself a new literary agent, one of those high-powered New York agents with the nasty habit of telling you the truth if you ask for it. I enquired whether she had the sales figures for my novel Intoxicated, which had recently been published in the US. She told me I didn't want to know.

Then I mentioned that I was working on a detective novel about a midget porn star and his lover Grace Kelly. She told me the truth about that too, in a single word. (I still wrote it, just for fun.) The problem was that I had nothing but fiction projects planned, and what we really needed was a change of tack. 'Well, I do live abroad', I said. 'I suppose I could try to be the new Peter Mayle.'

I live in Galicia, NW Spain. I'd written a few bits and pieces about living here, things I'd jotted down in idle moments for no particular reason. So I polished something up and we showed it to an editor. This is where I got lucky.

They say that great editors are harder and harder to find. Manuscripts these days have to be in pretty good shape before they make it anywhere near an editor's desk. In my case, the MS wasn't in good shape. Although I admire non-fiction writers like Tom Wolfe and Calvin Trillin tremendously, I had no idea how to do it myself. Fortunately, this editor did.

She seemed to know how my book should turn out and exactly how to achieve it. From the outset, every piece of advice was right on the money, every suggestion, many of them involving substantial changes, seemed to move us inexorably forward. It was a strangely compelling process, like working with a schoolmarmish mind-reader; in the end I even began to look forward to the arrival of each new batch of editorial comments, and that's not a common feeling for a writer.

My stab at being the new Peter Mayle was turning out to be a sort of foodie travel book. But 'food' was too broad a theme. It needed narrowing down, and I decided to concentrate on the pig. In rural Galicia the 'house pig' was traditionally the domestic waste unit all summer, then the provider of bacon, ham, and innumerable other porky bits through the long, miserable winters. For Galicians, the pig signifies a lot.

So I set myself the target of eating every part of the animal, in as many parts of Galicia as I could. For a year, that's essentially what I did, I ate pork. As one reviewer observed, nice work if you can get it. I drove around villages and hamlets, up mountains and through forests, and wherever I went I asked about pigs (and what parts of them I could eat). I carried with me a diagram of a pig, pasted into my Moleskine; after each meal, I crossed off another part of the hog.

Right up to the deadline - just a month or two before printing - I was still writing new stuff, and refining what we already had. 'You know,' the editor would say, 'I think there should be a chapter about...' Off I'd go, in search of the perfect pig slaughter or an interesting way of doing the kidneys, all the while wondering if I'd still be writing the book after it was published.

Galicia has a largely undeveloped rural hinterland, and I met some great characters during my search for pork. I had trotter stew with self-sufficient farmers who'd spent their entire working lives without electricity or mechanised tools on a remote mountainside. Up another mountain I ate chorizo and potatoes in a hippy commune while angelic hippy-infants gambolled with hippy-sheep in the meadows (which were just normal). I met Fidel Castro's favourite cousin (the Castros were Galician), and took part in a thousand year-old ant-throwing festival, with chunks of piping hot pig head for supper once everyone was drunk and covered in live ants... And when it got impossible to tick off the final bits of the animal, I cooked up a terrine of pig brain and face meat, although I had to do it in someone else's kitchen, since my wife is a vegetarian.

When the book was published, I became a minor pork celebrity here. I was on La Ventana, Spanish radio's prime-time chat show. It was broadcast live from a theatre with an audience of a thousand, and a further million listening at home. If you think you can speak a foreign language, try live network radio and a theatre full of eager listeners: I shat myself, linguistically speaking. Then there was an appearance on Luar, Galician TV's Friday night variety show, which on the evening in question was pig-themed; yes, that's a whole evening's singing and dancing extravaganza about the tasty animal I'd been chasing all year. I don't think Peter Mayle ever got to do anything like that.

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Everything But the Squeal: A Year of Pigging Out in Northern Spain was edited and published by Farrar, Strauss, Giroux (US), and is also out with Summersdale in the UK and Wakefield Press in Australia.

You can view a Flickr photostream of the book here.

Senses Working Overtime

An American banker is kidnapped on the streets of Antwerp. Held in a sealed-off apartment he is, at first, reasonably well treated with requests for books and other items granted with little delay.

But then things start to turn nasty. His captors commence their plan - to remove his senses one by one. And the whole thing is being filmed and broadcast across the internet with viewers paying to vote for whether to end his torment, or to prolong it.

Which may sound like the plot to a dodgy horror movie, the sort that has about seven sequels, and in lesser hands it may well have read like this. But Stona Fitch is not trying just to shock you for the sake of it, his remarkable novel will really make you think, force you to consider your own position and beliefs. But it will also fuck with your head. Just a bit.

As each atrocity is committed you find out a little bit more about the kidnapped banker and, as you do, you find that he isn't perhaps quite as innocent as all that. Not deserving of his fate exactly, but the defined edges of right and wrong become blurred.

It takes a highly skilled writer to be able to create scenes of gut-wrenching torture (I did feel physically sick at one point, when Touch was being dealt with by the kidnappers) and somehow not make them feel gratuitous. They are there for a reason and work completely with the story. The tension borders on the unbearable as you discover which sense is next, as is the feeling of resignation when it happens.

Senseless is a short novel which most people will polish off in just a few sittings. You won't be able to forget it though. Ever.

Senseless by Stona Fitch is published by Two Ravens Press and is out now. There is also a movie adaptation that I am going to try to check out. Trailer below. In German for some reason, don't think it is a German movie, was filmed in Scotland as far as I can tell.

Guest Blogger: Marcus Chown

My Top 4 Bonkers Things About the Universe

I’m a science writer and, as a science writer, I am constantly amazed at how much stranger science is than science fiction; how much weirder the Universe we find ourselves in is than anything we could possibly have invented. I was thinking about this - and what I might write in this guest blog - when I remembered seeing a You-Tube video which comedian Robin Ince did of his top “Top 5 Dead Scientists”. Reasoning that, if an idea is a good one, it’s worth ripping off (!), I thought I’d do something similar. But, instead of my “Top 5 Dead Scientists”, I thought I’d do my "Top 5 Bonkers Things About the Universe". Actually, because of space constraints, I’ll slim it down to just 4!

Number 4: If the sun were made of bananas, it wouldn't make any difference

This is because the reason the Sun is hot is that it contains a lot of mass. All that mass weighing down on the core, squeezes it and makes it very hot. In fact, the centre is about 15 million degrees. Crucially, at such temperatures, all matter – regardless of its composition - dissolves into an anonymous state called a "plasma". So it doesn't much matter what the Sun is made of. Actually, it is about a billion billion billion tonnes of mostly hydrogen gas. But if you were to put a billion billion billion tonnes of microwave ovens in one place - or a billion billion billion tonnes of bananas – the you’d get something equally hot that looked pretty much like the Sun.

Number 3: You could fit the entire human race in the volume of a sugar cube

This is because matter is incredibly, mind-boggling empty. An atom, if you remember from school, is like a miniature Solar System with a tight nucleus playing the role of a Sun orbited by electrons like planets. But the nucleus is incredibly tiny compared with the orbits of the electrons. Tom Stoppard, the playwright, had the best image. He said, if the nucleus is like the altar of St Paul's cathedral, an electron is like a moth in the cathedral, one moment by the altar, the next by the dome. Imagine, squeezing all the space out of an atom. Well, if you did that to all the atoms in all the people in the world, you could indeed fit the entire human race in the volume of a sugar cube.

Number 2: 98% of the universe is invisible

Only 4 per cent of the mass of the Universe is in the atoms that make up you and me, the stars and planets. And only half of that have we ever seen with our telescopes. 23 per cent of the mass of the Universe is invisible, “dark”, matter. We know of its existence only because its gravity tugs on the visible stars and galaxies. No one knows what it is. And 73 per cent of the mass of the Universe is dark energy. Discovered only in 1998, this invisible stuff fills all of space and it has repulsive gravity. To say we are at sea in understanding dark energy is a bit of an understatement. Our best theory of physics is quantum theory. It has given us lasers and computers and nuclear reactors, an understanding of why this stage is solid and the sun shines. But when quantum theory is used to predict the energy of the vacuum – of the dark energy – it gets a number 1 followed by 120 zeroes bigger than we observe. This is the biggest discrepancy between a prediction and an observation in the history of science.

Number 1: Out there in the universe there are an infinite number of copies of you reading and infinite number of copies my Top Five Bonkers Things About the Universe

This takes a bit of explaining. Basically, the Universe was born about 14 billion years ago. That means that we can see only the stars and galaxies whose light has taken less than 14 billion years to get here. Objects whose light would take more than 14 billion years – well, their light hasn’t got here yet. It’s still on its way. The consequence of this is that we can only see a portion of the Universe. We call it the “observable universe”. And the observable universe is surrounded by a horizon. It’s pretty much like the horizon at sea. Just as we know there’s more of the sea over the horizon, we know there’s more of the Universe over its horizon.

How much? Well, according to the standard picture which is called “inflation”, there is an infinite amount. So, imagine, the observable universe is like a soap bubble. Well, beyond the edge of it, there are an infinite number of other soap bubbles. All of them would have had a big bang, and in all of them different galaxies and stars would have congealed out of the cooling debris of the big bang fireball. In short, they would all have different histories.

But they key thing – and this has got to do with quantum theory and I won’t go into it – the key things is that there are only a finite number of possible histories. Now, if we have only a finite number of histories and an infinite number of places for those histories to be played out, then it follows that every possible history happens and infinite number of times.

So there are an infinite number of places where you never started reading this blog. There are an infinite number of places where the dinosaurs were not wiped out by an asteroid 65 million years ago but when on to develop intelligence and build motor cars.

If you’re wondering why I’ve picked this as my Number 1 Bonkers Things About the Universe, it’s simple. Even if this is the worst blog you have ever had the misfortune to waste your time on, I can console myself with the thought that, in an infinite number of other places in the Universe, you thought it was the best thing you had ever read and raved about it to all your friends and family!

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Marcus Chown covers some of these ideas in his new book We Need to Talk About Kelvin: What Everyday Things Tell Us About the Universe (Faber & Faber).

Guess What I Got For My Birthday

Should point out that Ethan is taking the piss with the 40 on my card. Not that old quite yet.

Birthday Songs For Sunday

Today is my 39th birthday. To celebrate I am going to Stina you all up.