Menu Ad Astra

Eric Idle, Professor Brian Cox and Noel Fielding are explaining the universe in a forthcoming BBC musical - The Entire Universe - showing over Christmas, on Boxing Day, I believe. I thought it relevant to resurrect this piece. 

---

To start:

Hydrogen bombes,

     Delicate, nascent cosmic embryos

     Of pure fusion universes,

     Less than a nanosecond old,

     As big as grapefruit and as dense

     As all there is.

Soup of the day:

Primordial Soup, 

     Rich in organic matter,

     Warmed at body heat over several millennia,

     Served when recombinant DNA appears

     As the first building blocks of life.

Insalata de pescatori universale

(Universal Fisherman’s Salad),

     Interstellar debris from the Pisces sector,

     Trapped in a filigree light sail’s fibres

     Each only a single molecule thick,

     And served with Green Kryptonite.

Main Course:

Supernova Farci,

     Stellar ejecta caught unawares, stuffed with heavy hydrogen,

     And set to simmer for aeons in their own thermonuclear reactions,

     Served with low gravity, and ionised plasma balls.

Black Pudding Collapsar,

     Boiled heart of a neutron star, several million times the density of iron,

     Moistened with the blood of Greek mythology,

     Served with reductionist tautology, and a side salad of curried mysticism.

Ursa Major Steak Flambe,

     Honey roasted flank of circumpolar constellation,

     Captured by campfires across the world 

     And stored in folk memory until ripe,

     Served in many traditions with a big dipper,

     And red and green aurora.

Sweet:

Black Space Gateau,

     The interstices of nothingness

     Broken into a praline of bite-size pieces

     And dusted with the sweet passing of time.

Lunar Eclipse Orange,

     Peeled refracted light in a narrow spectral band,

     From the very heart of the earth’s shadow,

     Flavoured with sun-ripened cane syrup

     And served in four quarters.

Dark Companion Chocolate Cake,

     The least prominent of an eclipsing binary,

     Cut into wafer thin slices,

     And served with double star cream

     Or left rotating stellar yogurt.

Coffee and Liqueurs:

     Fine Aldebaran Roast, Smooth Mizar coffees,

     Tisanes from the Galactic Rim,

     Spiced Coal Sack Rum,

     Relativistic Einsteinian Cream Liqueur,
All served with Fitzgerald Contraction
Before- (or is it After-) Dinner Mints.

© BH, 1997

---

I performed it in Aberdeen Planetarium in the late ’90s, usually as a precursor to planetarium visitors heading off to have a meal in the College restaurant as part of what we called ‘Stars and Bites’.

The 'Galaxy Song' (sung by Jake Williams) was also a regular feature, by the way.

Like Eric Idle (but without Brian Cox’s help) I’ve made corrections to the science. Please advise if more is needed.