One of my ideas regarding the Universe - some of which you may already be familiar with - is that it is Infinite. Infinite in space and time: there is no Restaurant at the End of the Universe, with a signpost next to it saying, 'The end, Go Back'; there was no beginning, there will be no end - it just is. You have to bear in mind that I am talking about the Universe, here, not just our little solar system. Our solar system (yes, including the Earth) will obviously end when the Sun burns itself out. Sorry to be pedantic, but I suspect there are people out there who think the Universe is The Milky Way, and I have to correct them on that point.

I remember the time I discovered Infinity. It was in 1994 when I was eight years old. During that time of my life, I went to a child-minding-style place after school, called the Big Fun Club. A supervisor would come to our school to collect us, and we would then walk about a mile or so to the High School where the club was, picking up children from another school on the way. One day in Summer, school had finished and the eight (about that) of us, with the supervisor were making our way to the Fun Club, when my friend, Jack, who would walk beside me, said, "Do you know what Infinity is?" I said no, I'd never heared of it, and he proceeded to tell me that, "It's the biggest thing in the world." Now, when he told me that, I wasn't sure what he was relating this infinity thing to. Did he mean: the biggest glass of juice; the longest piece of string; the highest number? Jack and myself were two of the mathematically-minded chaps in our class, and I went for the third option: "What, it's bigger than a million? No, hang on... bigger than nine-million, nine-thousand-and-ninty-nine? No, wait... nine-hundred-and..." You get the picture. I eventually found the number I was after (nine-hundred-and-ninty-nine-thousand-million, nine-hundred-and-ninty-nine-thousand, nine-hundred-and-ninty-nine) and he said, "Yes, it's bigger than that.' So I'd finally latched onto the idea that I couldn't name a number high enough, but we continued walking along, coming up with higher and higher numbers, trying to get as close to Infinity as we could (obviously a fruitless task), shouting out the highest number we could think of, only to have it trampled on with an even higher number. That night I was thinking about what Jack had taught me, and was simply fascinated by Infinity, and still am. However, I've recently come to realise that it's completely beyond the power of the human brain to comprehend Infinity, and so I don't worry myself with trying to reach it any more. Complacent is an adjective that comes to mind, as is the phrase, 'That boy isn't fulfilling his potential.' A phrase I'd heared all too often in my years at school.