Let me tell you something about being a grown up: it sucks. Oh, not in the 'I'm drowning in a mortgage and tied to a job I hate' kind've sucks, but as you grow older, and your knowledge of the planet we live as a whole increases, the amount of wonder it holds inversely decreases. I have these boyhood memories (as do roughly half of the population) of running and playing with no consideration for what we would have to tomorrow, tonight or even in an hour. But I have one particular memory which crops up fairly regularly, and always brings a smile with it. I don't know how old I was. 10, perhaps. Nor even do I think it was single occurrence I'm remembering, possibly an amalgamation of dozens, but I could picture it in HD clarity.It's one of those endless summer days, on holiday from school when everything which needed doing had been done and the day belonged to you and your friends. I grew up in a small town in rural(ish) Yorkshire, and near our house was a beck (stream, dontcherknow) which bordered the golf course at the end of the town until it went under a long-disused railway tunnel and disappeared into a rolling field of wheat. Standing on that bridge, looking out over the fields, I was always struck by how the world possessed such abundant possibilities. Anything could have been at the other side of those fields. Anything. And it was just there, across the waving arms of wheat, glowing honey-brown, and the only thing holding me back from discovering what it was the fun I was having with my friends, and my desire the game would not stop.Of course now I know what's at the other side of the field. And what's on the other side of that. I also know that field isn't there any more Now there's a bypass which helps impatient drivers get to where the field isn't any more and god help any young boys who want to try and cross it. It's hard not to feel cheated by the world when memories like this bubble up. Where's the adventure? Where're the lost lands waiting to be discovered and explored? Well, they've all been discovered. All of them. Go on, get on with your lives.*sigh*Anyway, this is a very roundabout way of saying, "but it's not all bad! Look, they found a giant squid!!"
Buying a telescope and all the books on astronomy I could lay my hands on was one way I hoped I'd be able to keep my boy's wonder at the world intact in an age of immediate facts at your fingertips. But until human feet touch Martian earth, the giant squid will do.