Small world

Small world?

You're kidding.

It's firkin huge.

Jets may be fast, but this is one big ball.

Lying in a Bristol hotel-room running cities through my mind.

Madrid. All those people crammed onto street-long Metro trains in worm-tunnel lines. Above them, broad avenues crazy with cars, buses, trucks and bikes.

Same in Paris, London, New York, Moscow and a hundred other cities glowing in the creeping night like hot circuits on an endless board.

People-sized. That's what size it is.

Microscopic billions woven into the flaking paint of an ageing world. Whole lives lived within the limits of what they know.

Free-radical travellers hopping like quantum particles between realities. Coming and going as the great glitter-ball of life turns in the invisible light of the sun.

A long-playing record - history lying among its grooves like so much dust.

It's a firkin big world.

Immense.

Have no doubt about it.