Life

I'm fifty-two. I take an interest in stuff, I read around, I think about things, I discuss ideas with other people. I have opinions on the best era for music (1977 - 1983, obvs), the best Nick Cave album and the precise point at which John Irving's books stopped being worth the effort. Sometimes I change my mind about things - for example, I've gone from thinking that Jeremy Corbyn might be a saviour to considering him a menace - but at any given time, I usually know what I think. 

But life on other planets or elsewhere in the universe? Surely amongst those 100 billion galaxies, each with their hundred billion stars, there must be other life. I get the arguments. Yet, in my gut, I sometimes think just because it happened here, why should it happen somewhere else? Is it an inevitable outcome of complex chemical soups on rowdy young planets? 

I simply don't know what I believe (although I know I'd like it to be true*).

But I do know life is both ambitious and tenacious. Just look at those plants growing out of the old brick buildings in Manchester. Or here, in my barbecue, unused since last year, moss growing amongst the ashes and old bits of charcoal. Ambitious but, in this case, misguided.

*As long as they're friendly and not too much like us

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Reading: 'Reality Is Not What It Seems'