Walking with Wallace

By Michael Koe

Walking with Wallace tells the story of conversations between the Author and his beloved Staffordshire Bull Terrier, Wallace, as they walked in the beautiful South Northamptonshire countryside. These conversations often included debates on the philosophical and scientific concerns of man and dog, such as the origins of the Universe in which they

• Language: English
• Publisher: CMD
• Release date: Sep 22, 2020
• ISBN: 9781952046858

Michael Koe

Educated at Sandroyd School, Marlborough College and The Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, Michael was sent, as a young intelligence officer, to Washington DC during the Kennedy era, after which he served with the Royal Green Jackets in Penang, Borneo, Berlin, Cyprus, Tidworth, and Northern Ireland. His final posting was to Rheindahlen, as Brigadier General Staff Intelligence of the British Army of the Rhine and Northern Army Group. He attended The Royal Military College of Science (BSc Engr), Staff College (psc) and the Joint Services Staff College (jssc). He left the Army in 1984 to join a Defence and Security Company in Jordan and London. He and his wife Sara moved up to Northamptonshire in 1987. In 1992, Sara was diagnosed as having a comparatively rare neurodegenerative disease, Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP). Details of this devastating disease and of the charity itself , which they set up together in 1994, can be found at www.pspeur.org. This was the subject of his first book, ‘Charity Begins at Home’ published in 2007. Sara died from PSP in January 1994. He continued to run the Charity until 2011. He has four sons, all married, and twelve grandchildren.

Book preview

Copyright © 2020 by Michael Koe

All right reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodies in critical article and reviews.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The reviews expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1: In the Beginning

Chapter 2: Young Wallace

Chapter 3: Enter Wilson

Chapter 4: Enter Archie

Chapter 5: Dogs in Wallace’s Life

Chapter 6: Routine and Not Going Abroad

Chapter 7: Assessing Risks

Chapter 8: Ageing and illness

Chapter 9: The Meaning of life

Chapter 10: Some Tentative Conclusions

Postscript

Introduction

The Author, Michael Koe, would like to point out that neither the views expressed by him in this book, nor those attributed to his Grandson, Archie, on their walks with his dog, Wallace, are necessarily actually their own. Whose, then, are they, you may wonder. Well, the point the Author is primarily looking to make is in relation to his comments (and Archie’s) on quantum physics and related subjects. These comments, which hopefully you will read and inwardly digest as you progress through these chapters, are largely extracted from and based around the Author’s understanding of various books on quantum physics that he has read. The Author acknowledges that he may have misinterpreted some of these and doesn’t want anyone thinking, potentially mistakenly, that what he has written is necessarily gospel.

Wallace, too, might well wish to point out that some of the views he is quoted as expressing are not his, either! ‘Walking with Wallace’ is, therefore, correctly designated as not primarily a book designed to educate the reader on quantum physics nor is the Author actually quoting his dog! Wallace’s given views are, however, as close to Michael’s perception of his thinking as possible, as too are the scientific and philosophical facts he debates with Wallace and his grandson Archie, (of whom you will hopefully read more later), on their walks together. This story is essentially a real life account of their walks in the beautiful South Northamptonshire countryside, during which Wallace, Archie, when around, and the Author debate important philosophical and scientific issues of concern to man and dog. .So, too, is the relationship between Michael, his family, his Grandson Archie, Wallace’s predecessor, a fine Staffordshire Bull Terrier (Staffie) named Wilson and, of course, Wallace himself.

Wilson, Wallace’s predecessor had been ‘rescued’ from Battersea Dogs’ Home by Michael’s son Jamie and proved to be the most gentlemanly and well behaved Staffie possible, despite his attraction to and skill with the rugby ball. Due to the pressure of Jamie’s work and life in London, Wilson’s visits to Michael and his Wife, Sara in South Northamptonshire increased to the point that he, Wilson, was relocated to live up there and became Mummy’s Staffie, on a more permanent basis, with an implicit transfer of ownership, though his allegiance to Jamie remained strong throughout his short life. Wilson deserves his place on these pages for the honour and loyalty he showed in his short life, as the pathfinder Staffie, preparing the Author for Wallace’s later arrival.

Wallace, easily identifiable from the photograph on the cover, was a handsome and loving Staffie. He and the Author lived under the same roof (and at night, it must be admitted, after some skilful early maneuvering by Wallace, on the same bed), over thirteen years, during which time they probably saw more of each other than of any other living creature.

The Author, whose lovely wife, Sara, sadly died from a devastating neurodegenerative disease in 1995, has, in his eyes anyway, four brilliant sons, four beautiful and brilliant daughters in laws and thirteen wonderful grandchildren, all of whom he and Wallace saw as often as possible.

You, like them, the Author hopes, might like to read more about Wallace and him, (known to his Grandchildren and referred to throughout this book, as ‘The Brig’) and their walks and philosophical debates.

Finally, the Author would like to thank all those who have so generously helped him, in different ways; a special thanks to both to Debbie Benadie, for her hours of proof reading of content and to his family for their patient encouragement and helpful input in putting this book together.

Chapter 1:

In the Beginning

The Brig, was - and still is - a keen amateur cosmologist. He avidly reads newspaper articles about the latest discoveries in particle physics, quantum mechanics and black holes. He keeps on his desk a list of questions about the universe, life on other planets and on dark energy, dark matters and other important related philosophical issues. He would often discuss these with Wallace (and Archie, when around), during their walks through the beautiful countryside in which he lived.

Wallace ponders matters in the garden

Despite Wallace’s tendency to be distracted by what was going on around him and to keep his thoughts to himself, he always appeared to have as good an understanding as any on these issues. Anyway, The Brig felt he knew him well enough to be able, when in doubt, broadly to interpret his thoughts, though he accepted not always correctly, for Wallace could, at times, be remarkably unpredictable.

On a clear, sunny, spring morning, as The Brig turned the key in the garden door, Wallace, as usual, magically materialized alongside him. They crossed the house’s paved terrace together, climbed up the two steps on to the still wet lawn, sparkling in the early morning sunshine and made their way on up the gentle slope of grass to the top gate. This opens onto a small extension of the next door Church’s cemetery, with a public footpath running left and right to the green fields beyond. As they moved left through the cemetery, Wallace was, unsurprisingly, up ahead, full of energy at the start of his morning walk.

Passing through the cemetery extension, their interest turned to the rows of ageing tombstones. As Wallace meaningfully approached one, The Brig felt himself travelling back through time. In his mind’s eye, he dwelled on the comparatively short lives of those buried there. He looked back on his own life and the happy years with his late wife, Sara, and their four sons, as they grew up.

He pictured Wilson, his son Jamie’s puppy, romping in the grass in the garden of the house, where Sara and he had lived, when they had ‘inherited’ him as their first Staffie. He recalled stories about these wonderfully loyal, brave and handsome bull terriers, brutalized in the eighteenth century and trained to fight to the death in cellars in the Staffordshire mining country. His thoughts went on back to their breeding from bulldogs and terriers to their powerful and aggressive ancestors, used in battles in Roman times.

He thought too about his own, at that time, powerful and aggressive Viking ancestors (he recalled his Father telling him and about his Danish Great-great Grandfather, who apparently had sailed over peacefully enough from an Island near Copenhagen, to set up as a barrister in Scotland and then moved to Ireland, around the time that Darwin was born.

Charles Robert Darwin, as he reminded Wallace, was the scientist, whose book ‘On the Origin of Species’ spelled out, to a disbelieving World, his theory on this, that was to challenge accepted view on this controversial subject across the World. Their thoughts about Darwin and evolution quickly transported The Brig, in his mind’s eye, back to the emergence of the human race from the animal and fish world, then further on back to the beginning of life itself on earth and then on back to the formation of the stars and galaxies and on and on still further, to some 13.5 billion years ago, to the Big Bang itself, the very creation of the Universe.

In the beginning—I mean in the very beginning, not when you nor I came into this world, nor even when our ancestors arrived, The Brig remarked to Wallace, as the latter sniffed the grass close by a nearby tombstone. ‘Neither you nor I, nor any living creature was around in any recognizable form, though each of us, I suppose, could have been a part of a huge cluster of unspecified quarks (elementary particles and fundamental constituents of matter). Everything that is anything in our Universe started with the ‘Big Bang’. This was the moment of creation, when time and space began and our now majestic universe grew in a few micro-seconds from near nothing into an unbelievably hot, ever expanding fiery ball of fundamental particles that make up all its and our constituent parts’.’ Wallace nodded sagely, as though all was becoming clearer.

In less than a minute, The Brig continued, our universe had grown to over a billion miles across and was still expanding unbelievably fast, doubling its size every second. Everything you can now see, feel or touch just grew from this miniscule black hole, far smaller than the size of a full stop.

Wallace looked annoyingly unimpressed, toying at some earth next to a gravestone, no doubt thinking ‘what was the Old Man on about’ and why should we bother about when and how the Universe started or worry about its size some 13.5 billion years ago. No one he knew was around then and no one he knew really cared how it all began. He certainly didn’t. Probably, in his view, there was quite enough going on in the here and now on this beautiful morning to keep everyone happy, without such irrelevant distractions as fundamental particles.

Admiring his philosophic acumen, but sensing his lack of historical perspective, The Brig ploughed on -it had to be said, without engendering much further interest in what was rapidly becoming a rather one sided philosophical monologue. He half apologetically added, to anyone still listening, that such scientific assertions had always fascinated and worried him. Perhaps, he suggested to Wallace, The Universe around us was formed from the immensely compressed contents of the death throes of another dying universe or even from nothing, surrounded by nothing; though, if just nothing, one had to ask what, if anything, did this nothing consist of? And what was going on before that Big Bang? And what was around that black hole, when it arrived; more of this nothing?

Some astronomers, he recalled, reasoned that, put another way, nothing consisted of equally balanced quantities of plus and minus ‘half nothings’ or, in more scientific terms, of exactly balancing of matter and anti-matter particles. Whenever a particle of matter meets a particle of anti-matter, the pair will, they tell us, like true warriors, annihilate each other- back to nothing (with the tell-tale emission of gamma rays). In which case, The Brig wondered why all the matter around us had not been annihilated by its anti-matter pair? And, since it had not, where had all that missing anti-matter gone? "Is it even now hanging around, waiting its moment, and if so where, he asked, as Wallace moved off toward a nearby tombstone.

‘Was he too wondering where those antimatter particles had gone; or even whether they were hiding there behind that nearby tombstone, for that certainly had his full attention’, thought The Brig. More likely, he feared, just sniffing out another mark.

It was, he reflected, anyway, an extremely difficult question even for our brightest scientists to answer satisfactorily, particularly in light of recent experiments at CERN (The European Centre for Particle Physics) in Geneva. The Large Hadron Collider there accelerates, to speeds near that of light, particles travelling in opposite directions through its 34 mile long elliptical tunnel under France and Switzerland to a designated narrow section, where such particles either narrowly miss or collide with each other. These near speed of light collisions, which mimic conditions in the universe a few trillionth of a second after the Big Bang, have successfully (without blowing the world apart as some had forecast or feared) created, albeit briefly, small quantities of antimatter, confirming its existence.

At the time of the Big Bang, anti-matter was, cosmologists assure us, around in large quantities. Its disappearance and the existence of dark energy and dark matter, they believe, all play crucial roles in the balance, and even existence of our expanding Universe. Their experiments, too, support the strong theoretical and mathematical evidence that ordinary (positive) matter represents only 4% of the universe, with dark matter representing some 23% and dark energy the rest, a massive 73%. You’ve lost me, thought Wallace. Stay with me, said The Brig, it will all become clearer over time."

Let’s just get this walk done, thought Wallace. Stop rambling and start marching. We must talk more about this dark matter and dark energy later, said The Brig, who anyway was already finding it extremely difficult to get his own head around some of these cosmological propositions. He also feared Wallace was no longer paying the necessary attention and that he would currently be wasting his time in asking him his views on such matters or, indeed, on anything else.

However, the possibility that, before the Big Bang, there was no time, no space, no anything but the eternal present stretching back for ever, chimed well with Wallace’s focus on the ‘here and now’, thought The Brig. Wallace’s expressive brown eyes made it clear too that he was much more interested in the eternal present than