A few weeks ago, some friends and we (doesn’t that sound wrong?) were discussing the meaning of life – not the film “The Meaning of Life” but the meaning of life.

This is the sort of thing we did when I was a student and blind drunk on Newcastle Exhibition.  These days as a 70-something teetotaller I’ve got no excuse for such navel gazing and should know better.

Anyroadup, my rather facile contribution was to tell them about a passage I’d read in “A Short History of Nearly Everything” by Bill Bryson – as good a writer as you’ll meet in a long day’s march.

In it, he explains that everything - all matter, the Universe and all that’s in it, you, me, everybody else and even piccalilli is composed of atoms.  Inert and completely lifeless atoms.  He goes on to say that if you were to pick yourself apart atom by atom with tiny tweezers you’d be left on the floor with a pile of fine atomic dust, none of which was alive, ever had been nor ever would be.  Yet for one impossibly brief moment in infinity they’d combined to make you you , something unique, but more importantly, with life.

The Greatest Question of All therefore, is “What did that?”

Perhaps one day science will discover the answer, logically and empirically.

And what a sad day that will be.