Smythe’s Theory of Everything
Robert Hollingworth is a successful and talented visual artist as well as a respected writer. As an award-winning artist he has held thirty solo shows since 1980 and has works in more than twelve public collections.
Until recently Hollingworth was better known as a writer for his essays and short stories which have received critical acclaim. His more recent longer works include Nature Boy, self-published in 2004, and They Called Me the Wildman: The Prison Diary of Henricke Nelsen published in 2008 by Murdoch Books. This book was shortlisted for the South Australian Premier’s Literary Awards Fiction prize in 2010 as well as being selected for the NSW Premier’s Reading Challenge List in 2009, 2010 and 2011.
Smythe’s Theory of Everything
Robert Hollingworth
For Ken
Published by Hybrid Publishers
Melbourne Victoria Australia
All rights reserved
Copyright © by Robert Hollingworth
This publication is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced by any process without prior written permission from the publisher. Requests and enquiries concerning reproduction should be addressed to the Publisher,
Hybrid Publishers
PO Box 52, Ormond 3204.
www.hybridpublishers.com.au
First published 2011
National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
Hollingworth, Robert, 1947-
Smythe’s theory of everything / Robert Hollingworth.
9781921665523 (pbk.)
A823.4
Cover design: Robert Hollingworth
Digital Distribution: Ebook Alchemy
ISBN: 9781742980881 (Epub)
Conversion by Winking Billy
In memory of J. J. Hyland
In 2001 the author found a little diary written by J. J. Hyland. He was sixty-two and in a nursing home. The following is inspired by his story.
For my brother Ken
The problem, in brief, is that time may not exist at the most fundamental level of physical reality.
- Tim Folger, Discover - Science,
Technology and the Future, June 2007
The reality of life in a pension-level home is one that most have never heard about, never seen and don’t know exists. I am confident that if they did know, they would put up their hand to help in whatever way they could.
- Colleen Pearce, Victoria’s Public
Advocate. The Age, 29. 09. 2009 Failing
Our Vulnerable
The bottom line, Craig, is that time is no more than a measuring device based on the revolutions of planets. And it works very bloody well. But it goes awry on one important occasion: when it comes to sizing up the true nature of the universe. Come to think of it, it goes awry on another occasion as well: when it comes to sizing up the true nature of people; that is, judging them by their age.
- Jack Smythe
John R Smythe
Height: 5ft 5 1/2” or 166 cm or 1.66 metres
Weight: 9 stone 6 lbs or 132 lbs or 60 kg
Hair: Dk brown
Eyes: Dk brown
Next of kin: Christopher Smythe (son) or Lisa Villas (daughter)
If lost, answers to the name of ‘Jack’.
Medications
Coloxyl with Danthron (faecal softener with peristaltic stimulant)
Argyrol for bowels (white emulsion compound)
Alusob for upset stomach (build up of bile due to gall bladder removal)
Aludrox - Antacid tablets
Mylanta - Aluminium Hydroxide gel,
Magnesium Hydroxide (for neutralising bile in stomach)
Lasix (pronounced phon. Lay-six) to treat fluid in feet (1 per day)
Mogadon (1 tablet on retiring - for sleeping)
Savlon cream, Amolin cream, Aristocort (for feet)
Murine, Visine, Argerol (all drops for the eyes)
Good normal pulse rate is 70 to 80 per minute
Temperature in Fahrenheit = 1.8 times Celcius + 32 i.e.
(1.8 x Cº) + 32 = Fº or (Cº x 2) - Cº over 10 + 32 = Fº
Phar Lap’s heart was 6 kilos (= 13.2 lb)
1
An ant has six legs and as such, has the potential to move them in 4,683 different ways - or permutations, to use the correct term. Those 4,683 different permutations include moving three legs on one side and then three on the other, which would be a rock from side to side, and moving all six together, which would be a jump or a hop. The ant, however, uses only one of its 4,683 options. It moves two legs on one side (front and back) at the same time as the middle leg on the other side and then reverses the process in the next step. Though I wonder why it has six legs at all. Four should be plenty, like mammals.
The spider has eight legs. It is remarkable to think that those extra two legs mean it has an astounding 545,835 different options for the order in which it could move them. Yet like ants, all 38,000 known species of spider the world over move their legs in just one sequence. Figure that out! And figure out what that sequence might be. If there was a God (and don’t get me started) it would take that omnipotent bearded wonder a lifetime just to resolve that single issue.
When I was sixteen, Kitty and I had a spider living behind a poster on our bedroom wall. That was the year my life began. If I were to choose the exact moment, I’d say it would be 9 a.m. on the morning of my birthday. You might think I had sixteen years before that, 5,849 days to be exact, including leap years. But I can tell you nothing happened in all those 5,849 days, nothing at all. But that morning of my birthday it all changed. It was a Saturday and Kitty and I were just lying on our beds stretched out and staring at the wall. I can see that room as though it was here right now: the globe hanging down, the stain near the ceiling in the shape of a brontosaurus, the punch hole in the plasterboard where my father did his block and the row of three nails in the back of the door.
And my big poster of the Solar System. Even in those days I wanted to know about planets and stars and what it all means. From my pillow, those spheres of wonder-ment fairly flew around the sun and I knew in my imagination every aspect of them; their moons, comparative densities, surface structures, gravitations, atmospheres, compositions - the entire meaning of existence was contained in that one buckling poster.
And behind it there came to live a big huntsman. One morning I woke to see it right there on the wall. I took an old dart from the bedside drawer, aimed