I thought about it so much, I was late for Armageddon

Sep 17 2008 by Laura Davis, Liverpool Daily Post

WITH the impending end of the world due to take place last Wednesday, I decided to draw up a list of everything I wanted to do.

This was not one of those “what I need to achieve to make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside” lists, which characteristically include at least one of the following: dancing naked in the rain, reading War and Peace or performing a parachute jump (not my personal choices, you understand).

Instead, I set about creating an inventory of all the things I would like to make happen if the Large Hadron Collider switch-on really had brought forth the apocalypse as the doom merchants were suggesting.

Two ironies struck me as I took out my pen.

Firstly, that a machine created to replicate the Big Bang, and therefore the very start of the universe, could bring about its downfall.

Secondly, that this should happen on the Swiss border – the country that has managed to sit out two World Wars.

If pushing the on switch had started a chain of black holes that would eat the planet from within on Wednesday, then surely there would be no consequences to what I did on Tuesday.

What freedom! If only it didn’t come with the biggest of catches – that I wouldn’t be around to look back on the experience.

So what would I do? Well, there’s nothing like complete liberation of action to stunt the imagination.

On last year’s Big Brother, bear with me here, a pair of identical twins were asked to list things you could not do with a paper clip.

One of them spouted more suggestions than there are varieties of coffee in Starbucks, while the other was struck dumb.

“Hah,” said the watching psychologist. “The one with no ideas at all has the greater imagination because she simply cannot think of a single thing that is impossible to do.”

Well, I think the opposite must also be true – that when options are limitless, they suddenly become impossible to define.

And anyway, what if I had performed a topless rumba in Sefton Park only for the clock to keep on ticking past 8.30am, the time the collider was due to be switched on.

Before I decided how I would spend my final hours, I needed to check out the likelihood of Armageddon coming to Liverpool.

A quick Google search revealed a few reassuring words from Prof Brian Cox of Manchester University, who is involved with the research and also happens to have played keyboards with D:Ream, whose hit, Things Can Only Get Better, was the Labour Party’s 1997 election anthem.

He has been receiving death threats from those who are followers of the black hole Earth consumption theory and was quoted in a national newspaper as responding with: “Anyone who thinks the LHC will destroy the world is a t---.”

Ah, OK – that scientific explanation for why we shouldn’t be saying goodbye to our loved ones has swung the balance. I reach for my pen.

So this is how it went . . .

I spent the potential last night of my life pondering what I would do if tomorrow (or at least post-8.30am tomorrow) never came.

During this process, I consumed four cups of tea and couldn’t sleep, which meant that, ultimately, my final hours were spent lying awake, wondering what to do with my final hours.

If this were a romantic comedy, chick lit or an example in a self-help book, I would have stared at the clock as the minute hand flicked on to 8.31am and realised one of two things – either that I am utterly content with my life and don’t want to change anything, or that I shouldn’t wait for an impending apocalypse to decide how to spend my days.

But, as real life doesn’t come with an organised plot, I eventually fell asleep, slept through my alarm and Armageddon, had it come, would have taken place just as I was running for the bus.

lauradavis@dailypost.co.uk