Oliver Jeffers

Hello.

I'm sure by the time I get to the end of this sentence, given how I talk, you'll all have figured out that I'm from a place called Planet Earth.

Earth is pretty great.

It's home to us.

and germs.

Those f***ing take a backseat for the time being because believe it or not, they're not the only thing going on.

This planet is also home to cars, brussels sprouts, those weird fish things that have their own headlights, art, fire, fire extinguishers, laws, pigeons, bottles of beer, lemons and light bulbs, pinot noir and paracetamol, ghosts, mosquitoes, flamingos, flowers, the ukulele, elevators and cats, cat videos, the internet, iron beams, buildings and batteries, all ingenuity and bright ideas, all known life,

and a whole bunch of other stuff.

Pretty much everything we know and ever heard of.

It's my favourite place, actually.

This small orb floating in a cold and lonely part of the cosmos.

Oh, the accent is from Belfast, by the way.

You may think you know this planet Earth as you're from here, but chances are you probably haven't thought about the basics in a while.

I thought I knew it.

Thought I was an expert even.

Until that is, I had to explain the entire place and how it's supposed to work to someone who'd never been here before.

Not what you might think, although my dad always did say the surest sign of intelligent life out there is that they haven't bothered trying to contact us.

It was actually my newborn son I was trying to explain things to.

We'd never been parents before, my wife and I, and so treated him like most guests when he arrived home for the first time, by giving him the tour.

This is where you live, son.