On Earth, Nobody Can Hear You Laugh.

The Shire had that eerie silence about it again tonight – the sort that’s so profound it makes you feel like everybody has gone and left you behind. It was easy to imagine that even the well lit cottages only had lights on because their erstwhile occupants had forgotten to turn them off on the way out.

And then, just as I was passing two such cottages in Mill Lane, I was struck by a mind boggling absurdity: just how inconceivably tiny we and our structures are compared with the vastness of space. It was so mind bogglingly absurd that I wanted to lie on the road and laugh at the whole silly business.