Rachael and Melvyn

CONVERSATIONS WITH UNCLE MELVYN
CRYSTAL SHERES
R. Uncle Melvyn?
M. Mm?
R. Why do stars twinkle and planets don’t?
M. Because you have to see the stars through the crystal spheres that the planets run on.
R. Come on, Uncle Melvyn! Nobody believes in crystal spheres.
M. Pythagoras did. How else would the heavenly bodies hang in the sky as they travelled round our earth?.
R. Our teacher told us that the planets are really trying to get away, but they are held onto us by invisible strings called gravity.
M. And you believe that?
R. Of course I do!
M. I suppose it makes a kind of sense.
R. And you have a better idea?
M. I’ll tell you something else the ancients thought. Since (unlike the planets) the stars never move or change, God must live up there, because He is the same for ever. They thought that nothing beyond the moon ever changed.
R. But some stars do change. Meteors move slowly across the sky, and meteorites whiz down.
M. That’s why they thought meteors were a different kinds of star, and they must be between us and the moon, where things change and move.
R. But they aren’t; they are miles away!
M. You know that and I know that, but the ancients didn’t. Not ‘till Galileo got hold of a telescope. But it’s true that things on earth are changing all the time. We are born and die. Churches and mountains crumble. But there’s something else that’s always changing between us and the moon….. The weather.
R. But the weather is meteorology!
M. Funny that we still call it that, isn’t it? Anyway everything went wrong when Galileo discovered the moons of Jupiter, and some new stars called novas appeared.
R. Why?
M. Because new stars are a change and the spheres couldn’t be crystal as Jupiter’s moons would break his sphere.
R. What a pity. The spheres were beautiful. But you still haven’t told me why planets don’t twinkle.
M. I suppose it’s because their light doesn’t have to travel anything like so far.
R. So you don’t really know!
M. I think it’s time for a marmalade toastie…..