Dripstone |
noun: the form of calcium carbonate that exists in stalactites or stalagmites. |
Ingles |
noun: plural of ingle; an archaic or dialect word for a fire in a room or fireplace. |
With so many hours of air travel behind me I had somehow managed to acquire a sort of Zen-like calm about the whole flying experience. Lack of legroom had ceased to be uncomfortable, the air had stopped tasting stale and other people’s elbows were no longer the enemy. Being on a plane wasn’t odd any more; it had become the norm. I put my headphones on, closed my eyes and zoned out. I might have walked on to a 747 but once there I ascended to an astral plane all of my own.
Long after the plane had landed I too returned to planet earth. Today, I was in the sunny climes of San Diego. By rights, I should have been mentally and physically wiped out by the rigours of travel but instead I felt energised and focused. Adrenaline was coursing through my veins; I was feeding on the energy of the task itself.
A dollar and fifty cents bought me a bus ride from the airport to the city centre. From there I took the tram, or trolley as it’s known to the locals, past trailer parks full of cheap homes and expensive cars, out to the small town of Santee, home of the Institute for Creation Research and therefore the home of Duane T. Gish, PhD, aka Dripstone Ingles.
Santee is at the end of the line and the trolley deposits you at what is basically a big out-of-town shopping complex; a cluster of warehouse-size shops and an enormous parking lot. I was a little early for my appointment so I took the chance to slip into a branch of Old Navy and buy some clean underwear. (By the way, Old Navy is a regular high street clothes store in the States, selling things at the (exceedingly) cheap and (quite) cheerful end of the market. I don’t want you to think I was buying used underpants from retired sailors.) I dumped my dirty underwear in a nearby litter bin. It didn’t seem quite right but I wasn’t taking them with me and I didn’t know what else to do with them.
I rang the offices of the ICR to ask for directions and was pleasantly surprised when I was put through to Dr Gish himself who then offered to come and pick me up in person. He spoke slowly and deliberately, his voice reedy with the sibilant whistle that comes with old age.
I’m not sure why, but I hadn’t expected him to be particularly old. I was already expecting this to be a difficult encounter. I wasn’t expecting to share much common ground with Dr Gish and now, in discovering the generation gap between us, I knew there was even less.
Normally when meeting a googlewhack my expectations would be shaped by the emails we’d exchanged. There might be only one or two but it would be enough for me to glean some kind of insight into their personality. I’d had no direct contact with Dr Gish at all; what contact I’d had was with his secretary.
No, my expectations of Dr Gish were based on one simple fact. I might not have known what he was like as a person but he was a senior figure at the Institute for Creation Research, so I knew that I fundamentally disagreed with him.
As you might guess from the name, the Institute for Creation Research is a creationist organisation. This means they argue against the theory of evolution, preferring to believe that the earth was created by a supernatural being. At least that’s how they phrase it when they try to present it as a scientific argument rather than a fundamentally Christian one – because essentially it always seems to boil down to a particularly zealous and literal interpretation of the Bible. They believe that mankind was created, that we are the great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great grandchildren of Adam and Eve, not Bobo the chimp.
In parts of America there is a powerful lobby group in favour of creationism and alarmingly, they have won some victories. Some American schools have banned the teaching of evolutionary theory. I find it impossible to believe that the children affected have not had their education harmed as a result.
But of course I would say that, wouldn’t I? Because I’m a product of an education system that teaches evolutionary theory. Like anyone else who’s been through the British school system, Darwin’s ideas on evolution are lodged in my brain as incontrovertible facts. Just as I know that William the Conqueror invaded Britain in 1066, the Great Fire laid London to waste in 1666 and Miranda Mcleod would put out on a first date (OK, one of these might have been specific to my school) so I know that, in nature, the fittest survive and they pass their winning attributes on to their children and so, over several millennia, species evolve.
The theory of evolution is placed so firmly in our consciousness that anyone who doesn’t believe in it inevitably appears to be a crank. Of course, if you take a suspected crank and serve them up with a side salad of religion, not unnaturally, the world tends to recoil.
I’m no expert, but insofar as the arguments have trickled down to mainstream media this would be my understanding, complete with the prejudices of my education, of the two points of view.
Evolutionists say: this is our theory to explain the way the world is. We’ve got a lot of fossils, we’ve done a lot of carbon dating and it all fits in with our theory. Cool, huh?
Creationists say: my, the world is an amazingly beautiful place, isn’t it? Look at how well it works. And we’re here! Aren’t we great: people? I mean there’s no way any of this just happened is there? It can’t have done. No, no, no. Someone pretty special must have come up with this. Evidence? You want evidence? Oh … right … well, look, it must be true, it says so in the Bible.
What strikes me as particularly odd about this is that, to my mind, the two views don’t seem quite so incompatible. I’m not a religious person myself but plenty of eminent scientists have a faith in God so presumably, somehow they manage to square the two. All you really need to do is accept that the Bible is a piece of literature and, as such, is full of poetry, allegory, metaphor and so on. People often forget that Charles Darwin himself was a theologian.
If memory serves, the Bible says it all started with God saying ‘Let there be light’ while the conventional scientific view says there was a Big Bang. I don’t see any argument there. Big Bang? Check. Lots of light? Check. Yup, everything seems to be in agreement so far.
Now, according to the Bible things were created in this order: water, land, plants, fish, animals, man. I think that’s pretty much what evolution says too. All you have to do is find a poetic interpretation of the word ‘day’ so that ‘on the second day’ reads as ‘and then what happened is’ and the two camps seem to agree on quite a lot of the broad strokes. If anything this serves to make the Bible seem more real to me, not less. If I wanted to make a case for religion I’d be pointing out how thousands of years after the Bible was written, scientists using the latest technology have proved what the good book was saying all along. Instead the creationists seem to be throwing their toys out of the pram because it turns out creation probably didn’t happen in only six days.
All this was running through my head as I stood at the Santee Trolley Station waiting for Dr Gish to arrive and, as you can see, I had some preconceptions, ill-informed prejudices if you like, about his beliefs and therefore about him. I thought creationism to be narrow-minded, wrong-headed, dogmatic poppycock. But I didn’t care, as long as he found me some googlewhacks.
To that end, I had a plan. Presumably his secretary, Mary, had explained the reason for my visit so he would have a rudimentary understanding of my googlewhacking needs. If we had to get into a discussion about creationism I would try to ensure it happened after the googlewhacking had been completed. If we talked about it beforehand and I revealed my own views on the subject we might fall out with each other and if that happened he might not even be prepared to try and whack his Google for me.
I carefully eyed every car that pulled into the parking lot, looking for the kind of car that would be owned by an elderly, narrow-minded, wrong-headed, dogmatic poppycock believer. When his car did eventually roll in I somehow knew that this was my man. The car seemed to be as big as a house. It was so long that the front end had turned through 180 degrees before the back end had left the main road. It drove directly towards me and for a moment it looked as if no one was driving but as it got a bit closer I could see a pair of eyes peeping over the steering wheel like a little chipmunk. Here was a very small man in a very big car.
‘Ah, Dr Gish I presume?’ I presumed as the car pulled to a halt.
People have been presuming aloud about doctors for a long time now and I don’t like to buck the trend.
‘Mister Gorman?’
As we cruised down the big, straight, wide Californian roads it became clear that either Mary had failed to pass on the nature of my visit or Dr Gish had failed to take in the details. Either way, it was obvious that he thought I was there for the specific purpose of learning about creationism. I guess that’s what most people who visit him do and at 81 years of age it’s no surprise that he assumed I was there for the same reason.
‘So, what first got you interested in the subjick of creation?’ he asked, his breath whistling through his teeth.
With his diminutive stature, chipmunk eyes and whistling, teeth-clacking speech I remember thinking he was kind of cute. But creationism had just landed on the agenda and my plan was flying out of the window so I didn’t have time for thoughts like that.
‘To be honest,’ I said, scrabbling to steer the plan back on course, ‘I’m not really here to learn about creation. I came because you wrote an article on your website that contained a googlewhack and I was hoping you’d be able to find me a …’
I’d lost him. At the mere hint of my lack of interest his brow furrowed. At the mention of googlewhacking his chipmunk eyes clouded over with confusion. This wasn’t what he expected. I was speaking googlewhacking gobbledegook and the data just didn’t compute. Just as my computer sometimes freezes when it’s confused, so Dr Gish seemed to freeze at that moment. His head was cocked at a slight angle, his expression was unchanging and he said nothing for an uncomfortably long time. Luckily the road was straight and wide.
‘I mean, obviously, I am interested in the subjick of creation as well,’ I said, hurriedly abandoning honesty. ‘It’s just that I only encountered the subjick…’ (damn that wandering accent, stop it, stop it, stop it!) ‘… when I saw your website recently.’
That seemed to do the trick. Dr Gish’s head straightened up, his brow unfurrowed and his eyes cleared. I’d successfully rebooted my host. Just in time too, as the entrance to the ICR arrived moments later. We cruised in and parked up.
I sat in a comfy chair in Dr Gish’s book-lined office and he sat across the table from me. Several books authored by my host were placed on the table in front of me and Dr Gish set about extolling the virtues of creationism. I had no choice but to revert to plan B. I would allow Dr Gish to teach me his views on creation. And I wouldn’t argue. I would listen to it all with wide-eyed innocence, I would nod, I would agree, I would take it all on board. I would do this for as long as it took. Later on, when I was convinced that Dr Gish regarded me as a friend, I would segue the conversation into googlewhacking. That way, I figured, we would both go away from the encounter with our desires fulfilled. He would go away believing that another mind had been persuaded to his cause and I would go away knowing that this chain of ’whacks continued.
Dr Gish began by explaining his background (he’s a highly qualified scientist with a doctorate in biochemistry from the world-renowned University of California in Berkeley) and while he talked I picked up one of the books in front of me. It was face down, but I read the opening paragraph of the back-cover blurb with delight.
This sequel to Dr Gish’s influential book, Evolution: The Fossils Say No! (first published in 1973), is now bigger and better than ever!
What a fantastic title that is: Evolution: The Fossils Say No!!! It seems more reminiscent of a 1950s B-movie than an academic textbook on the subject of creation. Say it aloud to yourself, say it in a big booming Orson-Welles-playing-God voice and it sounds fantastic. I liked it. It displayed a sharp mind and a common touch that I found endearing. I was still convinced that the message contained therein was cock of the poppiest variety but I had to admire the man who could package it in such appealing terms.
I looked up at Duane T. Gish and did a bit more nodding as he explained his beliefs further.
‘… if the Big Bang is true and we all start off as hydrogen gas and by natural processes the universe has evolved and life formed by evolution and so forth and so on then who needs God you see and many people conclude there is no God. Well, I was convinced otherwise and I believe that the teaching of evolution as a fact in our schools and colleges has had a profound effect on American society because it has changed tremendously in the last 60 years …’
I looked back down at the book in my hands. The sequel to Evolution: The Fossils say No! If the original had such a compellingly brilliant title, what had he called its sequel? I was excited to find out.
‘… since that time I’ve lectured in 49 of our 50 states, most provinces of Canada and about 40 different countries. I’ve had about 300 debates with evolutionists mostly held on university campuses or schools or auditoriums, sometimes in churches ...’
I turned the book over to see the title. It was brilliant.
‘… I’ve spoken all over the world and in my own country on the subjick…’
EVOLUTION: The Fossils STILL Say NO! A small snicker escaped my lips but I managed to pass it off as a bit of a cough. It was brilliant; quite, quite brilliant.
‘… We’re not a theological organisation, we are scientists…’
I could barely contain my glee. The Fossils STILL Say NO!! A stroke of genius to be sure! This man had asked the fossils in 1973 and they’d told him evolution hadn’t happened. Years later he’s gone back and the fossils have said, ‘Look, we told you last time!’ I was in the presence of genius. Cuddly, old, wrong-headed genius maybe, but genius nonetheless.
‘… We are depending upon our scientific facts for our strength for our position. We are a Christian organisation but I’ve been invited to Turkey to speak to Muslims. Our main thrust is scientific …’
As Dr Gish moved from explaining his background and into the scientific theory both for creation and against evolution, I picked up a copy of another one of his publications. If I was to keep myself from laughing I had to find something else to look at. This time I held a small pamphlet, around three by five inches in size and about 30 pages long. The front cover was bright orange and featured a drawing of six heads progressing from a chimp at the far left to a man at the far right. But in case you think the pamphlet was suggesting this journey had taken place, the title begged the question: ‘Have You Been Brainwashed?’ The back revealed it was published by Gospel Tract Distributors and that a copy could be ordered for only 25 cents. (If you’re interested in spreading the word yourself, you can bulk buy a hundred of them for the bargain price of $15.) This was publishing more interested in spreading the word than making money, more interested in prophets than profit.
I opened the pamphlet to see it was laid out in comic book style and took in the first few frames. Some young, attractive, clean-cut students at the University of California were thinking of attending a lecture on the subject of creation vs evolution.
‘I think it would be a good idea. I’ve really been confused on the subject of evolution,’ says one, no doubt reflecting the voice of American youth. In the bottom right-hand frame the visiting lecturer was concerned about whether or not there would be a crowd. The name of the visiting lecturer? Dr Gish.
Brilliant! He’d written a cartoon pamphlet starring himself! Not that I recognised him from the pictures. The Dr Gish before me was considerably shorter than my five feet nine inches, he had a small pot belly and a round, cuddly face. Yet in his cartoon incarnation he had strong, rugged good looks, broad shoulders and an impressive jaw. He appeared to have cast Ben Affleck as himself. I stroked my beard as if fascinated. I rested my index finger on my bottom teeth and bit down hard on the knuckle. It was the only way I could stop myself from laughing while maintaining a dignified, ‘interested’ presence.
The pamphlet was making me laugh so I looked at Dr Gish instead. I stared intently at him and his neatly coiffed hair but found myself having to bite down harder on my knuckle when, through his grey thatch, I swear I could see the stretched fabric that gave it away as a wig.
The rugged Gish of the pamphlet and the rug-ed Gish before made me think he was a man of great vanity. Which shouldn’t have surprised me because the creationist viewpoint seemed to be one of great vanity too. The world, it said, was so beautiful, things were so perfect and all this has been given to me! This must be the work of God!
It’s like a lottery winner thinking it was bound to happen to him, when the truth is, it was bound to happen to someone.
But that’s what Dr Gish and his creationist literature seemed to be telling me. Underpinning it all was an inability to see oneself as part of the chance and randomness. Yes, the chances of life evolving as a result of a big explosion that spilled hydrogen and helium into the universe are billions upon billions to one. But the universe is infinite. How many billions upon billions upon billions of such explosions have occurred? Besides, just because something is a squillion to one chance it doesn’t mean it can’t happen. I should know because a one in three billion chance called Marcus once sat in my living room and took a one in three billion chance that led to a man called Dave Gorman. If that can happen, surely anything can!
In spite of my cynicism for the subject, I am alarmed to say that Dr Gish was an incredibly persuasive speaker on the matter. He explained that billions of fossils for sophisticated life forms were found in rock from the Cambrian period but that no fossils for simpler ancestors were found in Pre-Cambrian rocks. Essentially, he explained that there was no fossil record showing a transitional animal, part way between one simpler and one more complex life form. If there’s no evidence to show these creatures had ancestors, does it not follow that they must have arrived on this earth fully formed? Were they created? It was a powerful argument and I could feel myself falling under his spell. Perhaps the fossils had indeed said ‘No’!
I turned a few more pages of the pamphlet and saw a picture of a fish and a lizard. I read the accompanying text: ‘Evolutionists claim that it took perhaps 50 million years for a fish to evolve into an amphibian. But again there are no transitional forms. For example, not a single fossil with part fins, part feet has ever been found.’
Was that possibly true? What about the coelacanth? The book, A Fish Caught in Time was still fresh in my mind. The coelacanth was a prehistoric fish. It had fins that were described as almost limb-like. Many scientists believed it to be the missing link that Dr Gish’s pamphlet was saying didn’t exist. Could Dr Gish be lying to me?
Perhaps I should have raised the question of the coelacanth. Perhaps he could have explained it away. But I didn’t raise the question. I wasn’t here on a quest for truth and good science. I was hunting my next googlewhack and today nothing else mattered.
*
The Second Law of Thermodynamics
In a closed system, all things tend towards entropy.
You may not have been expecting that to pop up in a light-hearted travel adventure, but I feel it appropriate at this time to introduce a note of science. The Second Law of Thermodynamics, also known as ‘The Entropy Law’, is a fundamental law governing the way the world works. Some of you may be familiar with it in other forms. For example, Flanders and Swann, the musical comedians of the 1950s and ’60s phrased it rather differently in their song ‘The First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics’:
Heat won’t pass from a cooler to a hotter
You can try it if you like but you far better notter.
[…]
And all the heat in the universe
Is going to cool down so it can’t increase
Then there’ll be no work and there’ll be perfect peace.
Really?
Yeah, that’s entropy man.
That might not be helping, but it means pretty much the same thing and I guess the point is that I’m indebted to Messrs Flanders, Swann and Coop for the fact that it is still hanging around in my brain. (Mr Coop taught Physics at Walton High School, Stafford when I was a boy, incidentally.)
Now that I’ve started this alarming scientific digression I feel myself haunted by the sound of books closing. Don’t worry reader, I’ll be quick. We can take ‘entropy’ to mean ‘disorder’, so essentially the law says that all things tend to become more disordered and chaotic … in a closed system. The ‘closed system’ bit is important.
To quote the law without that bit means nothing. It would be like saying ‘It is illegal to buy alcohol in Britain’ when the law actually states that it’s illegal to buy alcohol in Britain if you’re under 18 years of age. Unless you quote every clause of the law, you run the risk of looking stupid.
So … what does the ‘closed system’ bit mean? Well, if you put an apple in a dustbin and leave it there it will eventually rot. In other words it becomes more disordered and chaotic. The apple is in a closed system, it gets eaten by bacteria and eventually the bacteria die and decay themselves, leaving the dustbin with nothing more than goo.
However, if instead you put the apple in the ground – and the conditions are right – something new will emerge. It will grow, it will thrive, it will bear fruit. It will become more ordered and less chaotic, grabbing atoms from the atmosphere and the soil to construct a complicated, ordered structure otherwise known as an apple tree. This happens because this apple isn’t in a closed system because the sun shines, the rain falls and the earth nourishes.
I mention this because, even with my basic high school understanding of this fundamental physical law, I was aware that the highly qualified scientist sitting in front of me didn’t seem to have a grasp of it at all.
There I was, biting my knuckle, when he suddenly threw in the following curve ball: ‘Evolution […] is an absolute violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics […] if you have simplicity it cannot transform itself upwards into the system we have today.’
Whether or not you’ve followed my amateurish explanation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics you should know this. What Dr Gish said about it was not true. He had either chosen to ignore the ‘closed system’ bit or perhaps he had chosen to define the world wrongly as a ‘closed system’ in which case he was ignoring the presence of the vast universe that surrounds us. As it goes, the universe as a whole is obeying the Law perfectly well thank you very much in that it is expanding and cooling down. What happens on our speck of a planet is, in the grand scheme of things, irrelevant.
Either Dr Gish had spent his entire scientific career failing to understand the Second Law of Thermodynamics or he had chosen to deliberately misrepresent it to lay people like myself in an attempt to back up an argument he must have known it was flawed. I was convinced in that moment that he was deliberately telling me lies.
This was the first moment in which I was aware of thoroughly disliking any of the googlewhacks I’d met. Until that moment Gish may have seemed like a vainglorious, faintly ridiculous old man, but he had still been a cuddly, old-fashioned, well-mannered, cartoonishly physiqued old man with a passionate belief in something and I’d found him endearing for all of that.
Now I really believed he was a liar.
I found myself not liking Dr Gish but I didn’t like myself for not liking him. Liking people is far easier and much more fun than not liking them. I wanted to like him. I needed him to like me. I started trying to persuade myself that I’d misheard him. Maybe I wasn’t following the argument properly; after all, he was the qualified scientist, not me. Maybe he’d said it properly and my cynical attitude had caused me to hear a lie where there was none?
I lowered my gaze and pretended to study the pamphlet in my hands. But my eyes immediately landed on the words ‘The Second Law of Thermodynamics’. There it was being misconstrued again, this time in his printed literature. It wasn’t just me. I hadn’t misheard him. It wasn’t even a slip of his tongue. No, I didn’t like this preposterous old man. Now everything he said seemed ridiculous.
I reached across the table and picked up a different book. A big book, big enough to hide my face behind. This was a hardback book, aimed at kids, the same size as the Beano annual that would be in my Christmas stocking each year as a kid (and as a grown-up).
The Amazing Story of Creation from Science and the Bible by Duane T. Gish, PhD. I opened it at a random page and immediately had to bite my tongue. There was a picture of an animal: half cow, half whale. The front half was a cow, with legs, hooves and horns while the back half was a whale with a tail and fins and so on. The caption read: ‘Transitional forms would have been extremely vulnerable in either of the worlds they theoretically were bridging.’
Well, he was quite right! Had the whalecow tried to live in the oceans it probably would have drowned with its cow lungs! Had it tried to live on land it probably would have been eaten by a predator with its lack of hind legs and big flapping tail! You can’t use a fictitious, nonsensical 50/50 whalecow as an argument against evolution. No-one has ever suggested that such a creature ever existed.
I began to feel frightened. Frightened of laughing. If Dr Gish said another word or I turned another page I was in danger of laughing it all back into his pudgy little face. If that happened, there would be no way of persuading him to whack his Google. I had to contain myself. I had to move the conversation on to the more sensible realm of googlewhacking. Behind the big pages I took in some deep breaths.
‘Well, this is all very fascinating, Dr Gish,’ I said. ‘You’ve given me a lot to think about there. But really, the reason I came was in the hope that you’d be able to find me a couple of googlewhacks…’
He stared blankly at me. I rephrased it.
‘The other thing … just as a favour … you know that I’m here because I put the words dripstone and ingles into a search engine … Google … and I’m hoping to have a … kind of chain reaction where you find another two words and …’
I wasn’t getting through. His eyes were clouding over again. Maybe I could show him a googlewhack and explain it that way.
‘Could we possibly get on a computer together …’
His eyes brightened.
‘We have a … er … an email … er … a website,’ he said. There was hope in his voice. He wanted to help me and he thought this might be what I was after.
‘Yes … yes, I know you have, Dr Gish,’ I said, tiptoeing my way through the logic. ‘One of the reasons I’m here is because someone else found a googlewhack on your website …’
‘… our site… is er … my email… I can give you our computer … our … er website. The number … is … ah … www er … dot … icr … er … dot o. r. g.’
The language of the internet didn’t sit well with Dr Gish’s clacky teeth. It was obvious that he wasn’t au fait with the big wide world of the world wide web. He was 81 years of age. His secretary had replied to my email. He didn’t want to sit at a computer so I wasn’t able to demonstrate what a googlewhack was.
Of course there’s no reason why I should expect an 81-year -old to know his way around the internet and I’m not picking on him because of the apparent bewilderment with which he views the new technology that surrounds him. But it does go some way to illustrate how difficult a message it was for me to convey.
Trying to explain what googlewhacking was to Dr Gish was about as difficult a piece of communication as I’ve ever attempted. Imagine telephoning your grandmother and trying to explain to her how to set a video recorder. Now imagine that the connection is bad and the telephone is crackly. Now imagine that your grandmother doesn’t have a video recorder. Now imagine that sitting beneath her telly is a cake. A cake baked into the shape of a video recorder. That’s how difficult a message this was to convey. It was impossible. I tried. I failed.
‘Thank you for your time, Dr Gish,’ I said, my teeth gritted.
‘You’re very welcome,’ he said, his clacky.
And so the man who didn’t believe in evolution had stopped my chain of googlewhacks from evolving. Rarebit Nutters begat Bushranger Doublespeak begat Bibliophilic Sandwiched begat Dripstone Ingles and there the chain died.
We shook hands and I walked out of his office. I passed the offices of other scientists, I passed a wall with six paintings, each depicting one of the days of creation and I emerged into a warm and glorious Californian evening. The sun was fading but the earth had stored up a day’s heat and I could feel it gently rising through the soles of my feet.
I walked away from the ICR defeated. I passed the local gun store with its sign proudly boasting ‘Under New Management!’ and before long I found myself a small motel for the night. Fifty or so rooms clustered around a small pool. I was the only person in all of California not driving a car so a quick survey of the parking lot showed me there were only eight other residents that night. It wasn’t expensive.
It would have taken me forty minutes to put the dreary suburb of Santee behind me. Forty minutes and I could have been in the vibrant heart of San Diego. But I didn’t have the stomach for it. My chain of ’whacks was over, my morale was low. A paltry four in a row! I didn’t deserve San Diego. I walked to the 7-11 store and bought myself some bad food: a meal that involved boiling a kettle, and a bottle of cheap wine. I opened the wine, sat by the pool and watched the sun setting. Behind the distant mountains the night sky glowed a magnificent firey red. A glorious view but small comfort.
And yet, I supposed, there was hope. OK, that chain might have died, but another chain was still alive. Rarebit Nutters had begat Bushranger Doublespeak who begat Bibliophilic Sandwiched who begat Dripstone Ingles who begat bugger all, but Rarebit Nutters had also begat Hippocampi Wallpaper who begat both Verandahs Plectrums and Catnips Gargoyle. Emails had been sent and I was still awaiting the replies. I had to hope that there was more googlewhack-begatting to be done.
If not… well, if not; the journey was over. I’d have to go back home. For the first time in a while I thought about Jake. They say an optimist’s glass is half full while a pessimist’s is half empty. I poured myself a full glass of wine.