There but for The_ A Novel - Ali Smith [84]
The fact is, the astronomer called Mr. Flamsteed dug a hole that went directly down into the ground 40 m, which is a really substantial depth, and lay on a couch down there to look up at the stars because he thought going as deep down as possible would be a good way to see as high as possible. But it was very damp down there so it was not an ideal way to do it. Brooke passes the last remaining bit of the Herschel Telescope, which the Herschel family all sat inside one New Year because the telescope was actually big enough for them to sit in, because the astronomer called Mr. Herschel believed that the bigger the telescope the further up he’d be able to see. When the family of Mr. Herschel’s ancestors sat in there because the telescope was now no use to anyone and was dismantled, there was actually enough room for them to eat their New Year supper and then they even sang a song inside the telescope! Which is quite cool. Looking through a telescope that big would be like looking at the sky through the Greenwich Foot Tunnel. Telescopus: far looker CLEVEREST when they first invented them people were pleased because it was an invention that would be really useful in wars, like CCTV now CLEVERIST this is Brooke’s name in Morse code: Dash dot dot dot. Dot dash dot. Dash dash dash. Dash dash dash. Dash dot dash. Dot. There is a multiple of dashes right at the middle of Brooke’s name. How do Vikings send secret messages? By Norse code. Brooke dashes past the pretty bushes and up the steps and in through the place they sell the guidebooks. The girl called Sophie who works behind the counter waves hello and shouts, where’ve you been? It’s been so long! We were beginning to think you’d moved away! No, I still live here, Brooke shouts and waves back. The woman Sophie is working with does not smile because she is one of the kind of people who don’t talk to children. It is a quite good museum as museums go, though the museum in York, which is near the town where Brooke used to live, has actual old streets downstairs in it with shops with things from the past for sale in them and horses that were once alive. There was a young lady of York. Whose pet pig was made into pork. Though she cried, oh, you’ve minced ’er! They still all convinced ’er. To eat up her pig with a fork. That is one of the limericks she made up with Anna and Mr. Palmer on Friday morning sitting on the wall, the day Anna gave her the Moleskine a couple of days before her birthday and wrote the word History on the sticker in her really nice handwriting. Thought that would cheer you up, Anna said. And I’m officially assigning you the job of Historian. The history of their limerick writing that day is that it was much harder to get Greenwich to rhyme with things but in the end the limerick about it was funnier because of that. There was a young lady of Greenwich. Whose dad said be home before tenich. When she missed the last bus. Her dad made such a fuss. She was never allowed out againich. Mr. Palmer is really good at limericks. Mr. Palmer and Anna have gone now. You won’t miss us, Mr. Palmer said. You’ll be back at school in a few days. Today is Monday, there are six days of holiday left after this day THINK YOU’RE THE CLEVEREST LITTLE PIECE OF it means Brooke will wake up with hope in her for six more days. And when she goes back anyway things will have changed and she will not be cleverest. She will be the Brooke Bayoude, Cleverist.
The fact is, it is Spring and a lot warmer than it has been though it is still quite cold for April. Brooke wonders if the old lady who died in March is cold in the ground, or if Spring coming means it will be warmer for her down there. But that thought is a lot of nonsense because dead people are dead and can