The Butterfly Effect -- the actual thing, not the film.

In search of distractions from my history notes on the Radical Reformation, you would be amazed what lengths a girl will go to. For example, I actually resorted to 'tidying' the loft. Seriously. Well, my version of 'tidying' anyway, which actually means rifling through old photo albums/diaries/generally dusty stuff that is already put away.

Anyway, I happened to find a massive old folder full details of my family tree -- I knew that my Grandad had done some research into it - well actually, quite a lot of research - and had stolen a peek when he died almost three years ago. I remember finding his 'memoirs' in the folder and finding them immensely interesting. It's only 6/7 pages of handwritten memories, but the handwriting takes quite some time to decipher (Grandad apparently had a maddening habit of inexplicably dotting his t's as opposed to crossing them) and it was this that I found gathering dust in the loft.

I brought it down and showed it to my mum (succesfully distracting her from the job I wasn't doing) and we had a read through it, which yielded some humbling and very weird results. My Grandad worked for a railway company in Sheffield when he was eighteen, and one night he had been asked to work his friend's shift (the friend was off ill) and had been 'swinging' onto the train when the driver started the engine, pulling my Grandad from the platform and crushing his foot beneath the train. There were over 30 breakages in the foot and the initial plan was to amputate below the knee but (thankfully) something got delayed and a new doctor arrived, who instead decided to amputate only 3 toes and hope gangrene didn't set in. Thankfully it didn't, and this is a somewhat more legitimate explanation as to why my Grandad only ever had seven toes (the story he had told me involved Indiana Jones-style heroics, a trip to Australia and an alligator).

Anyway, my point is that, as Grandad tells it, a day later a letter arrived calling him up into the army. Obviously he was forced to decline, having had a portion of his foot removed and been forced to take 20 months leave from his original job. Had he left, he would have been in Germany for the next two years. This was fascinating enough, but the next thing my Grandad explained was that, had he been sent away he would never have met my Nan'nan; the consequences of which would have been no marriage, no children, and no me. If my Grandad hadn't been 'swinging' onto a train at the wrong moment, he would never have met my Nan'nan, my dad would never have been born and - consequently - neither would I.

It feels utterly bizarre to think about. I am only here as a result of a freak accident that probably - though he would never have admitted it - was at least partly down to my Grandad's own reckless attitude. If my Grandad's friend hadn't been ill, if my Grandad had refused to work the extra shift, if the driver had looked before turning on the engine, if, if, if - I wouldn't be here. Neither would my brother, my father, my uncle, my cousins. The knowledge of a real-life Butterfly Effect is humbling and exceedingly difficult to wrap one's head around. The event of that one night affected that rest of my Grandad's - and his descendants - lives.

What has this taught me? That life is fragile, delicate and SO easily altered; the smallest thing can change the direction of your entire life. And, also, don't swing onto trains that are about to start moving.