The beginning of the Universe has always perplexed the human mind.
But new findings by some of the most powerful telescopes in the world have given credence to the Big Sneeze Theory first propounded by Harold cosmologist Alec Fairchild ten years ago in the Squirrel Lickers’ Arms.
‘Professor’ Fairchild, as he’s known locally, has put in his claim for a Nobel Prize, supported by Eddie, landlord of the SLA. “I remember it well,” Eddie told the Evening Harold, “he was expounding his sneezing theory left, right and centre. In the end, I had to ask him to leave to prevent a flu epidemic.”
“Everyone is familiar with the power of a sneeze,” said Fairchild, “and it doesn’t take much imagination to scale that up and realise what a pair of All Mighty Nostrils could achieve. These new images coming in from the most distant parts of the Universe prove the theory conclusively and give us a far greater understanding of what was going on just before the beginning of time, namely The Heavenly Orchestra live in concert and a mistimed sneeze in a trombone.”
Fairchild said he has himself studied the grainy video made available by NASA, which captured the moment God was about to add some comic relief to the third chorus of Oh When The Saints, when He sneezed ‘one Holy Mother of a Sneeze’ right into His Trombone and accidentally created the Universe, later uttering His immortal words ‘Oh Bugger’.
The greater understanding is thanks to both the Cosmic Microwave Background which has taken nearly 15 billion years to reach us and to the work of theoretical cosmologists like Mr Fairchild in interpreting the patterns in the data, which he says bear a striking resemblance to the common cold virus.
“And that’s the modern view in a nutshell,” said Fairchild, “everything’s made of snot, including the Nobel Prize for discovering it.”