Entanglement. What a great word. It used to be used in conspiritorial sense .... "oh yes, the pair of them are really entangled" meaning they were probably rumpy pumping behind the bike sheds or in the stationery cupboard at the first opportunity. Considering the number of people these days who are in various states of entanglement, it is amazing that stationery cupboards don't come with four-poster beds. Perhaps they do and I am a little out of touch? No matter, the same can't be said of our little friends the photons.

Entanglement has a special meaning for them. No matter if a million billion years ago they were generated in some cataclysmic stellar event of humungous proportions or just some Fartistartblast switching on his torch to find his front door key, pairs of photons may be at either end of the universe but they still know what happens to each other - now that is entanglement for you.

No one has yet come up with a satisfactory explanation. It isn't as if it weren't needed. After all, entanglement rather drives a coach and horses through the idea that time "passes".

Perhaps it doesn't - well not in the sense that we perceive time as tic-toc-tic-toc time. Maybe time is tic everywhere or toc everywhere or perhaps tic is ten billion years ago and toc is now or rather the now that was there some infinitesimal toc ago? Or perhaps half the photon is in "tic" time and half is in "toc" time or perhaps whatever the photon is just doesn't believe in time, only in the existence of its entangled partner? OK - well that is enough to get the theoretical physicists amongst you salivating for the nearest pencil and deep armchair.

There is a very old argument about whether G.O.D (Great Omnipotent Disorganiser) is in here with us, doing his level best to sort it all out but never quite managing it, a sort of rather ham-fisted DIY deity whose intelligent design flat-pack universe hasn't quite got all the screws in the box, or whether he is out there, looking at us lot and laughing his socks off! At the risk of starting some new cult deep in the Californian desert, perhaps G.O.D is simply a larger version of an entangled photon - both here and there and neither here nor there at the same time, well if there is such a thing as time that is! If G.O.D's watch is broken, it would explain why human beings love music and why the most difficult thing to acheive in the universe is a punctual railway system.

As the bishop said to the actress ... it all depends on your point of view m'dearie.

Good night all, and to those of you with entanglements across the universe, good fortune.