A Bus to Andromeda

I think he might have been some kind of hitch-hiker, of the intergalactic Douglas Adams variety.

He had long, long frizzy hair, a cropped beard, black-rimmed specs, a long dark coat, voluminous, ballooning, satin burgundy trousers elasticated at the ankle, a rucksack. And he carried a light saber. An official one...it said 'Star Wars' on the handle.

It was difficult to tell his age - mid 30s, early 40s. He was travelling alone and as he sat on the bench, the saber propped carefully by his right knee, he hummed quietly. And it doesn't do to start conversations with random strangers, especially when they're armed. So that's all I know about him.

He got on the No 27 bus to Andromeda.

This bus exists. It runs every half-hour or so....and I've seen it enough times now to know it isn't actually a figment of the imagination.

It grinds up and down Rue Luxembourg and it seems ordinary enough - mucky, a few dents and scratches, growling engine; grumpy with pedestrians and pedestrian crossings, grumpier with cars and cyclists. You can get one of those fold-out Brussels city maps with its route clearly outlined in pale blue...starting near the city centre and veering across town to the eastern suburbs.

So far, so mundane.

 But there's more to it. Oh much more. Of course there is.

I have a theory that just around the corner, out of sight, somewhere on the ring road, when no-one is looking, it shifts a cosmic gear and, in defiance of all logic, of all laws of physics, in a cataclysmic flash of warp speed, it sets off on its speed-of-light journey, it leaps for the stars.

I think however hard you look though you will never see it happen Thomas. However determinedly you stare and stare and stare there will be a moment when you are distracted, a tiny moment, and when you look again, it will be gone, wiped from memory, wiped from time. That's just how it is.

But early this morning, using binoculars, I saw its destination...............2.5 million light years away, a vague, dirty grey smudge in a black, glittering sky, just up left from the Square of Pegasus, down right from the bright 'W' of Cassiopeia.

Our sister spiral galaxy, our closest neighbour..

Andromeda.

I wonder what the fare is....