Date 13th October 1870

location : Glasgow Southside, Cathcart Bowling Green.

Wee Maxie sat on his hunkers staring at the papers spread out before him on the fortunately dry grass. He stared intently at the scrawled symbols, words, arrows and question marks. Occasionally he looked up, a shout from the relatively new pastime taking place on the sort-of grass arena in front of him. The actions, reactions and emotions grasped his thoughts, twisted them into a 'why?' and manipulated the conundrum into a 'possibility, a conclusion, a reason......an explanation even.

His eyes and supporting senses pulsated in a graphical sheet-music composition as the scene before him captured the leather ball bouncing, sailing, arcing, soaring and bulleting from, off and among the myriad of sporting devotees. As their feet, knees and heads directed it in the desired direction (and rarely mentioned parts of the male anatomy caused electrically shocking convulsions of despair and 19th century assisted dying), the key changed, the melody developed and the approaching crescendo approached the answer to the one question that had always sat cryptically in his psyche....."WHY?"

"Of course....of course" an etheral scratch soothing his all pervasive itch. He glanced at the spread of paper at his knees; massaging his tongue between his upper and lower teeth, he adjusted a few of the numbers, swapped a couple of mathematical symbols and then with redirected arrows, powers to 10 and logarithmic contortions he finally had an answer.....not necessarily one that he had expected or envisioned but without doubt one that would reverberate down through the decades and centuries to come.

As he placed that final '=' sign he drew a breath and allowed his eyes to just once more divert back to that ball and the concerted attack of gang warfare chasing it like piranha after a bloody leg of lamb.

He was in harmony with the world a again. He would rise to his feet and go home once more.... there were easier problems to solve.....but for now he simply etched in letters that would become a definition of generations to come, one simple word. With that done he placed a small rock on the page on the ground, smiled as his vision had confirmed that the wee fella that had been watching him was still there and obviously intrigued, stood erect and began the first few steps of his journey home.

A journey from now...to the beginning of time...the end of the universe and ...how what happened, will happen, and perhaps what should have happened lay in the ideas behind quantum mystery, fitba, shies, stoatups and bye-kicks, and most of all in the ubiquitous head shaking exclamation....."FFS REF!!""