Andrew Scott reads: Zoom! by Simon Armitage

It begins as a house, an end terracein this case but it will not stop there. Soon it isan avenue which cambers arrogantly past the Mechanics’ Institute,turns left at the main road without even lookingand quickly it is a town with all four major clearing banks,a daily paper and a football team pushing for promotion. On it goes, oblivious of the Planning Acts,the green belts, and before we know it it is out of our hands: city, nation, hemisphere, universe, hammering out in all directionsuntil suddenly, mercifully, it is drawn aside through the eyeof a black hole and bulleted into a neighbouring galaxy, emergingsmaller and smoother than a billiard ball but weighing more than Saturn. People stop me in the street, badger mein the check-out queue and ask “What is this, this that is so smalland so very smooth but whose mass is greater than the ringed planet?” It’s just words I assure them. But they will not have it.