Image courtesy of Victor Habbick / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
A black hole has been located behind the adventure playground at St Joseph’s Primary School in Atherton. The portal to another dimension in question is 4.75 metres in diameter and growing, and poses an immediate threat to the handball courts and tuckshop.
“We are doing everything to ensure the safety and wellbeing of our students,” Principal Christine Walsh said in a statement to the Parents and Friends Association. “We ask for your cooperation during this difficult time.”
The tear in the fabric of spacetime was brought to Walsh’s attention during little lunch on Monday, April 13, when students reported that the playground was “windy”.
First-grader Tegan Manning was playing on the slippery dip when she experienced the collapse of gravity. “I flew right over the monkey bars,” she told an emergency response unit. “My Le Snak disappeared into thin air!”
It took scientists a full week to verify the highly improbable though not 100% impossible quantum thermodynamic event. In conversation on Radio National, Professor Steve Mackay of the Astronomical Society of Australia defended claims that his team was slow to identify the phenomenon. “We had to rule out every possibility,” Mackay said. “It could have been a tropical cyclone, for example. Or a whirlwind. A black hole isn’t something you just leap into.”
The task of trying to keep the all-consuming vortex of lightlessness under control has fallen into the hands of Mr Doug Houghton. In yesterday’s edition of That’s Life!, the retirement-aged groundskeeper expressed his doubts about the project. “I’ve tried rope, cardboard boxes, sticky tape, but nothing seems to work. To be honest, I can’t see a thing. They don’t tell you about event horizons in school, but the sons-of-bitches are dark.”
The singularity has been confirmed as having finite, non-zero temperature. Its exact cause is unknown.
Reggie Dwyer, spokesperson for the Parents and Friends Association and father of two, says that while the void in space and time is “unfortunate”, the parish shouldn’t lose sight of the bigger picture. “We have the lowest NAPLAN scores in the state. Not to mention Mrs O’Connor’s class has been without power for three weeks! As far as I’m concerned, the black hole can take a number and get in line.”
The tuckshop remains open, but the handball courts are strictly out of bounds. At this stage, the ANZAC Day bake sale will go ahead.