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Shamefully I haven't visited The Tempting Tattie in Edinburgh for a good few years, but I continue to promote it whenever I can. I knew that they had finally called the cheese and mango chutney potato The Richard Herring, but I didn't know how official it was. It's actually up on the board (thanks to David Scott for sharing). They do call it mango chutney with cheese, which is not an official Richard Herring (the chutney must be atop the cheese and there must be more cheese than chutney, but their description suggests they may have got it the wrong way round), but never mind. I am immortalised. The Tempting Tattie will surely still be there in 1000 years time and that board is made of plastic. And Richard Herring wept for there were no more worlds to conquer.
But the Tempting Tattie is the scene of my favourite Edinburgh happening -
can't believe it was 15 years ago- maybe the only time I was responsible for an Edinburgh "happening".
I had a fun chat with Marcus Chown about Black Holes and his book
A Crack in Everything for this week's book club. He's a journalist and physicist who writes about complex issues in a readable way and he sensibly concentrates on the human story of the people who made the various discoveries about black holes in this fascinating book. Black holes are neither black or holes and we still don't know lots of things about them, but we know a lot more than we did a century ago.
I find it mind-blowing that part of the result of the big bang (which probably wasn't big or a bang if I know physics) has not only gained consciousness, but been able to piece together so much about our origins. But as incredibly unlikely as our existence is, black holes as destructive as they are, are also one of the reasons we're here. At least the one at the heart of the Milky Way is. For some reason it's quite a bit smaller than the usual ones and so hasn't vented all the star-making gases out of the galaxy, allowing our sun to exist. So many impossibly unlikely things had to happen for me to be here writing this and you reading it. Yet here we are. For the moment. What the fuck will happen to our molecules next? I don't want to live to see that.
Marcus doesn't seem to think that if I go into a black hole I will emerge to discover the Planet of the Apes. But what does he know about physics. He says I might be a holographic projection of a two dimensional Richard Herring. But I am not. Because you can't put your hand through me. Nice theory, Einstein.
