At first it was an occasional anomaly. Amusing, in its own, peculiar way. The natural world throwing one of those random curveballs, tickling the human race with a little surprise and delight. We smiled; we cracked jokes and swapped memes. We welcomed this fresh distraction from the ever-churning grind.

Only smaller objects seemed to suffer in those opening few weeks. Things without any real weight, items unburdened by mass. You’d reach for a pen only to find it had levitated away from the desk. The envelope pushed through your letterbox would drift up to the barrier of the ceiling. Apples hovered ironically off the orchard floor, hinting at a return to the branch above.

But slowly, relentlessly, the anomaly was amplified, and the anomaly became a problem. In the park, dogs would float on the end of leads as if their owners were holding balloons. Bicycles would arc into the air like in that scene from ET. Distraught mothers could be seen jumping up to grab their babies before they drifted away into the sky. Every day we found increasingly heavier objects which were losing their anchor to the earth. It was only a matter of time before it began to affect us all.

No one could explain what was happening. The media was a carousel of experts, all postulating and theorizing while strapped into bolted down chairs. Social media thrummed with claims of government experiments and hostile invasions; of Hollywood cabals and a disease transmitted by unrighteous union. We were certainly not short of opinion. Opinion wasn’t the problem; opinion ran in good and ready supply. But what we lacked - as we turned to science and faith and conspiracy, as our net was cast with a mounting desperation - was anything that could provide any definitive fact.

Although I do wonder what those facts would have actually changed? Even if we knew the whys and the whens and the hows, would any of that have made the slightest difference? Life goes indisputably on. That’s simply how we’re built. We accept what’s before us and we learn to adapt. As our muscles atrophy and we choke back the nausea, as our blood pressure bubbles and we strap weights around our ankles, we are discovering how to continue. This is quite the situation, and everyone is simply trying to stay grounded.

And so now we orbit around each other with flailing limbs, pushing against solid surfaces, attempting to force some direction. I suppose we should talk about what’s happening – to us, to our world, to the way in which we all now have to live. But although there are times when some of us try, those conversations seem fated to falter and fail. Our vocabulary is inadequate; the moment is never quite appropriate. When our eyes meet we simply shrug or smile. We assemble the meagre as our obsessions; we fixate upon the insignificant. How can we discuss anything important when we have lost our sense of gravity?