Early one morning, some years ago, when I lived up on a hill in Lancaster, I set off to work on my bike. The side of the hill on which I lived faced north-westwards towards Morecambe and the Bay. I rode down the hill through the centre of town and out across the River Lune on the new Greyhound Bridge, heading for Morecambe, and the Ribble Bus depot to start my shift as a bus conductor. It's great cycling to work when you live at the top of a hill, but it's much harder getting home.
The sky was beginning to lighten, it was going to be a bright start to the day, which felt clean and fresh after overnight rain. I pedalled on, enjoying the clean cool air, enjoying the quiet of the traffic free road of that lovely early morning, and anticipating the warm feeling of the first rays of the day's sun on my back. As I rounded the bend where the road turns away from the river and points straight towards Morecambe the rising sun dazzled me, blindingly orange above the far horizon.
I'm sure you have had those moments when it is so quiet, not a soul in sight, when you feel that you are totally alone on the planet. Well, that is how I was feeling. However, an even greater sense of strange wonder came over me, for the sun was rising in the west, and even stranger, it was perfectly square!
As my mind tried to make sense of it all, it came to me in a flash. This could not be the planet Earth, for on Earth the sun rises in the east. This could not even be the same Universe I fell asleep in the night before, not if it had a square sun! The rest of the day passed uneventfully enough.
I told no-one of my trip to the other universe with a square sun. There would have been no point. No-one would believe it, any more than they did when, without witnesses I scored three bulls-eyes with three darts in the Bridge Inn at Tateham.
Oh, I forgot to mention, that through a great effort of intellect I did solve the mystery. But I'm not telling. Work it out for yourself. Or make something up.
Mail me if you come up with something; correct answers get a free mention, incorrect but sufficiently imaginative ones might, with your permission, get their own page. Really stupid ones will be noted as well . . . names will be mentioned!
