THE EMPTY WORLD WITH US IN IT

It has occurred to me tonight that most of the world, most of the universe in fact, is just empty space.

Oh you'll have heard this. You'll have heard someone say that if an atom were somehow the size of the Royal Albert Hall, the nucleus would be the size of a tennis ball, sort of hovering above the stalls in the middle.

Sure, and the cloud of electrons would be swimming around those circular corridors, looking for the doors to the fancy boxes.

But there's a lot of space between the boxes, the stalls and the middle of that auditorium, isn't there? And while the Royal Albert Hall is often full of glorious reverberating music, laughter, emotion and applause, the corresponding 99% of every single one of the trillions of billions of atoms is not. It's full of nothing.

Everything is nothing. There's a cheery thought.

I don't like Saturdays. Not sure whether you could have guessed, but there it is - especially dull, empty ones like today.

I tried to shake it up a little by going for a run. Phone in pocket, pink headphones (don't ask) and the Runkeeper app whirring away, picking random tunes out of my phone to match my pace.

The first track it chose was Debussy's Clair de Lune. Thanks a lot, iPhone. Sarcasm's the last thing I need from you, buddy.

So, after running, spluttering and finally coughing away in a bus stop for a while, I hobbled home and ran the bath.

Oh the bath, full of empty atoms of hydrogen and oxygen and calcium carbonate (I guess that's what's in Radox?) and me. I sank into it.

I suppose the beautiful truth is supposed to be that somewhere between the unending emptiness of the large stuff (you know, space and the universe) and the terrifying emptiness of the tiny things (atoms), there's us, filling up our lives with particles and bathwater and noise.

We aren't designed to be empty space; we're designed for life to the full, overflowing with hilarity and love and outrage and passion! We have music, art, conversation, literature, politics, landscapes, constellations, knowledge, and hopes and glorious dreams to fulfil. Oh and pink headphones...

But best of all, we have each other! Right? And as human beings, we're designed to create space, to use it to illicit emotion and splendour and awe, and then to fill it with music until our hearts burst with wonder.

Perhaps that's what my phone was trying to do with mid-run Debussy. Though I doubt it.