Hamish

Hamish and I were having a philosophical conversation in the kitchen this evening, he had seen a plastecine animation at school where Jesus turned a rock into bread apparently. I don't recall hearing about that one. I had started the day wondering about crocodiles, my mother is just back from Africa and had brought back some photos of crocodiles, dinosaurs, basically. If they were around in the same era as dinosaurs; which I am sure I have heard said - then why aren't they extinct? I was wondering this aloud to the Antipodean guy at the pig farm, where I was working today (pigs are no help to have around when you're digging, I can assure you) and his answer completely took me by surprise.
'Well, it's because they can swim, so they escaped the flood' I can only manage to nod and help myself to another biscuit that I don't even want because I realise that he's talking about Noah'sflood. My head is buzzing with questions I can't even begin to ask 'Okay, what about the flying dinosaurs?' or 'Why didn't Noah put all the other dinosaurs on the ark too then? Did he just not like them much?' It's dawning on me that he's a creationist, and I've only ever seen them on the Simpsons, but he's a real person, not a yellow cartoon character, a comic construct that's there for my ironic laughter. He's an intelligent man, an engineer and he lives right here in Argyll, not in the bible belt of America. As I leave Pam ushers me to the door and hands me three folded notes, I fight back the urge to shout over her shoulder at her husband 'What about fossils, then? eh?' I go home, the photos of the pigs are rubbish, my seventy four year old mother has a better camera than me, those crocodiles looked amazing, but what are they still doing here?