Sunny Garden

   

    Hi, she says. We finished at five to. Hi, Bean. And she offers a finger for Lily's waving hand to clutch. What am I doing? Am I getting anywhere with all this? She waves to the huge sandstone buildings around the Great Court. Do you have days when you wonder that?
    Plenty. Plenty of my days are the same as all my other days and therefore, by definition, get me nowhere. That 'every day in every way I'm getting better and better' thing? It's not possible. You can't even keep it up till you're a month old. I've had, like, ten thousand days now, and I must have improved on twenty of them at most. Three or four of them while at this campus. (p. 267-68)

   

    I take her across the Great Court, to the Parnell Building, to the display case just inside the door. The pitch experiment set up in the twenties by the university's first physics professor. He mixed the pitch and sealed it until it cooled and was apparently set, then he upturned the funnel and began a 170-year demonstration that pitch isn't solid. That it looks completely hard, but it's still viscous and flowing. In the experiment it drips out of the bottom of the funnel, but years pass between drips.
    I got my whole degree between the third last and the second last, I tell her . It often falls on weekends, and no-one's ever seen one fall. For the last year or so, it's been about to go.
    So what was he thinking? Ash says. He knew his physics. He must have known his great-grandchildren wouldn't see the end of this experiment.

    I hold the Bean up to the glass, and she slaps it with her hands, and makes a noise that says she knows there's something going on. Something in the case that I think's worthy of attention. (p. 268)

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Excerpts from Perfect Skin are © Nick Earls and are used with permission.

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Sunny Garden is designed, written and maintained by Liz Perkins, in cooperation with Nick Earls and Penguin Books. Any questions about Sunny Garden should be directed to Liz

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