Do you know?

I'm sitting here waiting for the 24th October 2013 to fully get under way so I can embark on a much-needed mini-adventure.

In a few hours I'll be heading to Malawi, via the burned-out terminal that was Nairobi, Jomo Kenyatta, and I can't help reflecting on the way that life appears to be little more than timing and luck. 

Good and bad timing, such as reaching your 18th birthday on the first morning of the Somme or starting your new job in the World Trade Center, NYC on 11 September 2001. 

I can't think of a good one, but that's just me. 

And luck. 

So there you are on the first morning of the Somme and friends keep disappearing around you.  Then you make new ones the next day and they disappear. 

Or you find yourself beneath where the planes struck, rather than on one of the floors above. 

Random. 

But someone is rolling the dice. 

Cue debate on who the someone is and a brutal war to decide whose version is right.

Humans!

Insignificant as a grain of dust, or the whole point of the universe, without whom it might as well not exist.

A crowded train crosses above a road on a dark, wet commuter evening. 

From the window you snatch a glimpse of a collision between a car and a bus twenty feet below, and in a moment the scene is lost. 

The car driver, father of four painter and decorator called Peter, is terribly injured and dies at the scene. 

You are the only person on the train to see the crash, but are moved on too quickly to know the outcome.  You return to your newspaper and change trains to complete your forty mile commute. 

You never know any more about the snippet you have just seen and have forgotten it by the time you goes to bed. 

So what?

This is happening every day.

Humanity. Grain of dust or the meaning of life and everything?

Is it possible that the universe has never seen the like, and never will again?

Plug in the probablility model and switch it on.

The only thing the model lacks is a soul.

Right.

That's it.

I'm off to Malawi.