22 December 2024
The story so far: Josh has been born in St Leonard’s Chapel during a service of Carols by Candlelight; Deliveroo riders brought dishes of lamb and a woolly hat.
Professor Maggi King was at the Observatory as she’d been every night for the past week. Something rather strange was appearing through the James Gregory Telescope in the night-sky. It had been looking for exoplanets in a rather insignificant stretch of the Milky Way for Maggi and her group when a star, that had never done anything remotely interesting, began to move. Stars, as a rule, only budged and wavered a little: Maggi’s group were well aware of that. They considered reasons why this star would appear to travel. Only, by the second night, it had moved so far that none of the usual possibilities could be true. Maggi began to be excited. This would be the paper of her life, surely bound for Science or Nature. Dare she even think – Nobel? Please let it stay clear. And it did, and every night she sat glued to the telescope, recording the extraordinary results. By the previous night, it had voyaged across the sky, until its arc passed right above St Andrews.
The only nagging anxiety she had was the Scottish Government’s Minister for Celestial Affairs Hamish E. Rod. Somehow he had got word of the moving star MT0202CMB (it was his habit to know things before they were widely known). He had emailed Maggi that morning, making it clear that stars transiting over any University estate required a number of overlapping permissions which he was anxious not to offer in the absence of firm assurances that the star, and anything it may portend, would not disturb the ordinary functioning of the University in its core missions of learning, teaching and research, or the defined roles of senior University Officers or Government Ministers. She should undoubtedly see it as her duty to share with him updates as and when such a progress took place, so that he could give such permissions, and indeed, welcome this hitherto unevidenced movement in the firmament.
Maggi settled into the chilly observatory and scanned the sky. How odd. The star had not moved from its previous position. It had stopped and stayed right over St Andrews. Maggi took the co-ordinates and plotted them on the Ordnance Survey. “Right,” she said to the two postdocs and PhD student who had come in that evening. “Put your coats on. We’re following MT0202CMB.”
Yours,
Donald.
Revd Dr Donald MacEwan
Chaplain