Ali Smith - There But For The

The fact is, Brooke is the six hundred and seventy-fifth person clicked into the Observatory today by Mr. Jackson with the people-counting clicker which it is his job to hold. Sometimes when Mr. Jackson is in a bad mood he won’t tell you which number you are. Today he is in quite a good mood. Well, if it isn’t the London Eye, he says. Where’ve you been? I haven’t seen you in weeks. It is quite busy here today, Mr. Jackson, she says. School holidays, he says. Tends to have that effect. You’re number 675 since my shift started. Brooke says goodbye and thank you. Then she weaves in and out through all the people who are taking photos of things and past the place where the Flamsteed Well was.

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’t feel. It is funny peculiar to think of her down there wherever it is that they put her in the ground in the town she lived in. The people came to take her to a hospital and she died in the ambulance on the way. Money doesn’t matter, she told Brooke one day. She was holding Brooke’s hand. It was when she still recognized Brooke. It was before she stopped being able to recognize people. All sorts of things we think matter don’t, she said, so long as you don’t wake up in the morning with no hope in you. Now Brooke has the note that Mr. Garth passed under the door which meant Mr. Palmer went and found the old lady’s house and asked the neighbours where she was and they said hospital. Brooke got the note from Josie Lee, who Mr. Palmer gave it to, and is going to conduct an interview with Josie to ask her about when she went to the hospital and everything, because it is part of the history of what has happened, and then Brooke will write the record of it. It is a historic document. It is dated December 29 2009. It is sellotaped across two pages of the History Moleskine and Brooke has left blank pages round it. It says in Mr. Garth’s writing: Hello. I’m hoping it will be possible for someone to visit and sit with Mrs. May Young, 12 Belleville Park, Reading, for some of the day on 29 January, on my behalf. Very grateful for your help. Thank you. Brooke also has the very first historic note Mr. Garth pushed under the door. It is not dated. Fine for water but will need food soon. Vegetarian, as you know. Thank you for your patience. It is on the first page of the Moleskine. She has all the The fact is notes. They are not dated either. She is going to sellotape them in. In a minute she will go and sit somewhere and look through the book and choose exactly which page the sellotaping-in of them will start.

The fact is, the Morse code for Mr. Garth is — — • / — • • — • — • — • • • • and the Morse code for your first name Miles is — • • • — • • • • • •

The fact is, there was a London Bridge first built in 1176. It took 30 years to build it. It lasted until 1831. It was over a thousand feet long

The fact is, a light year is the distance that light travels in a year

The fact is, that the sun will definitely die and there is nothing we can do about it, but it will not be for quite a while yet and definitely not in our lifetime so there is no point losing sleep over it

The fact is, the moon is 238840 miles from the earth

The fact is, the Hubble Ultra Deep Field telescope can reveal stars in a sky when it looks to the Naked Eye like there are no stars in it

The fact is, the Hubble Space telescope was launched in 1990. It is made of a tube that has a mirror at each end

The fact is, there was a telescope maker in history who was a woman her name was Mrs. Janet Taylor

The fact is, the author of the book called Robinson Crusoe had a brick factory where bricks were made that were used in the bricks that made the Greenwich Hospital

The fact is, the atomic clock that has replaced all the clocks at Greenwich doesn’t keep exact time because it still loses a second every 20000000 years

The fact is, that the plaster they used in building St. Peter and St. Paul is partly made of horses hair