Moibus

I had a theory that it might have been the extraordinarily violent thunder storm the previous night. However, William my friend who is a physicist poo-poos the idea.

She would go for a walk every day – it was partly to that fact that she attributed the great age she had reached in perfect health. In the course of so doing she came to know every inch of the surrounding roads, byways, foot and bridle paths. That made what happened that day so strange.

She set out from her front door turning left, after not many yards turned right into the bridleway, intending to follow this until the lane, then right again along it and back home by the farmyard track. One of her shorter walks as there had been things to do this morning and it would be good to be back in time for her usual lunch of soup and bread with lots of butter, at the normal time.

As often on her walks, her mind was busy. On this particular occasion it was concerning itself with a relative trivium – would adding cocoa powder to her renowned cherry buns be an improvement or make them taste strange. It therefore came as a surprise, but not a totally brain‑rotting one when she passed the house with the delightful carving of a fox on the ridge of the roof, and in her view the less than delightful name of Dun-Roamin. Surely that was in the lane? She hadn’t walked that far yet had she? Senior moment! She walked on. She hadn’t remembered that the bridleway was so muddy and rutted this time of year.

The real puzzle was when she passed the little chapel of the Iona Brethren sect, with its notice board stating times of their sparsely attended services. This was fully familiar to her, but surely was on the much longer of her set of regular walks, and in quite the opposite direction. Her train of thought had indeed been absorbing and rambling – she had got to a point where she was inquiring of herself whether she had the spelling of the word insouciance right – but it seemed implausible that she had drifted so far from her intended route. Never mind – carry on – she was sure of her ability to make like a homing pigeon. Onward!

Now that was not just strange, not just implausible, but impossible. She had come to the house with a fox again. It was not like her to walk in circles, but that was not the main absurdity. The house was on the left hand side, not to the right of the bridleway. The fox was pointing the other way. Strangest perhaps of all, the house’s name plate was in mirror writing -- . Bemused, but having no other thoughts as to what to do, she walked on. Was it longer or shorter than before – she felt unsure as she approached the Chapel. At first glance its self-righteous symmetry smothered any oddities, but she soon spotted these. The little bay tree was to the right not the left of the porch. The notice board, giving times of services but little indication that strangers would be welcome was to the left, not the right of the path and was, like the Dun-Roamin, all in mirror writing! Bemused, confused, and fighting down distress and even a tinge of fear, she walked on for a bit, there seeming nothing else to do.

Then, from somewhere, it came to her. She turned smartly around and walked back the way she had come. In no time she perceived that she was on the familiar rutted bridleway and approaching the road. However, when she reached that road, confusion struck again. Her cottage was indeed a few yards down it on the far side, but to the right not to the left. Even from here she could see that the rose was the wrong side of her porch. Almost automatically, and being unable to think of anything else to do, she went to it, opened the front door (the wrong way round) and went in. Only later did she realise that she had used, as always, the symmetrical mortice lock key, and wondered if she would have found herself locked out had she dropped the snib on the Yale with its complex key.

Inside, with everything inverted, doing anything was surprisingly difficult. She entered the kitchen, which was on the wrong side of the hallway, once she had sorted the hot tap from the cold had a drink of water. The biscuit tin, with its reversed writing and wrong-handed screw top proved a struggle, and yielded a digestive biscuit that tasted so strange that she discarded it and spat out the first bite. This would not do. This had got really worrying. An inverted house she could find a way of living in, but if inverted food was inedible, she was in real trouble. A solution was needed – and maybe there was one worth trying, even if as implausible as the preceding events.

Back out she went. Turned left as usual then remembered and turned right, then left into the bridleway. Past Dun-Roamin, its name normal and legible, was that to be expected? Past the tiny chapel, also apparently in its right mind. As she approached Dun-Roamin a second time the fox was again pointing in the wrong direction. Whoops! Turning smartly round she found herself shortly approaching the road. Joy! Her house was to the left of her, the rose to the right of the porch as it should be. Re-entering it she found that all was well, its proper chirality restored. Even the remainder of that biscuit tasted delicious. Soup time, extra lashings of butter on the bread.

Somehow, she did not walk that route again for ages, even though it had been a favourite due to its nearness and pleasantness. Fortunately, she had a large repertoire of alternative walks. It was on one of these that she came upon the slightly forbidding chapel, restored to its former location. This encouraged her to try again, with due caution and a preparedness to beat a rapid retreat at any sign of geometric distortion. Satisfyingly, all was well and it resumed its place as her favourite short stroll.

It seems that hypothetical hyper-spatial distortions caused by thunderstorms may be transient?

She never quite worked out the details of what had happened. This could be because the events were not fully consistent even with the weird logic behind them.