I started the weekend being surprised by some orange lights in the sky. As I walked out of my house I looked up and saw two orange lights that could easily have been aeroplanes but looked suspiciously like Spielbergian SFX. I turned right and headed down to The Fludyer Arms (this is Suffolk, okay?) which is about 300 yards or so from my front door. The gibbous moon was - as reported on Friday - hanging low and brightly over the sea. The orange light I then saw really shook me. Its jet trail was huge, grey and shocking (I mean it was HUGE - it looked like it came up from Tracy Island). There really is nowhere - unless Harwich Council* have decided to enter the Space Race - that this phenomenon could have come from.
During the rest of the weekend I have fended off comments about my sanity along with various other interesting conversations. I checked the orange light story and discovered that lots of reports have been filed over the last few years. Now, I'm not a crank (stop sniggering at the back) but I know damn well that I did not see any "Chinese Lanterns" ( what the . . . is that all about? To my knowledge "Chinese Lanterns" are not huge and whizzing about miles above us). I'm not really claiming that we're in the middle of The War of the Worlds, of course, but I know what I saw.
Anyway, I've ended the weekend by looking back at how much The Moon has been involved in my life this week:
Monday - Friday: American Werewolf In London; much discussion about the moon, lunatics, songs about the moon
Friday: orange light shooting by with a huge grey trail; blogging about Earthrise
Saturday: tried to watch Moon by Duncan Jones (aka Zowie Bowie) - it wouldn't work, faulty disc.
Sunday: various comments on the blog; Earthrise constantly on my mind. Incidentally, I've also just ordered a re-release of Los Lobos' Kiko and the Lavender Moon.
All of these things happened unconsciously. It's not a conspiracy, I know, but sometimes things play on our minds. Oh, I don't know, I'm probably rambling now. I started with Bruce Cockburn so I might as well end with him:
busy monster eats dark holes in the spirit world
where wild things have to go
to disappear
forever
These thoughts are wild things that are playing on my mind . . .
*I don't live in Harwich - it's across the water. I'm not aware of Council Tax payers getting upset about this attempt to beat the Chinese in the Space Race.
4 comments:
Was its trajectory up or down?
If up, then at the risk of being prosaic, might it have been someone letting off a flare from a boat? They are very smoky things, though it's true they normally go "bang". There is also the Norfolk & Suffolk Rocketry Association, plus something called "Slack Pete's Rockets" in Ipswich ("The UK's Most Laid-Back High-Power Rocketry Supplier").
If down (or "across") then I have certainly seen meteors myself that left a smoky trail (and audibly fizzed, too)
Mike
It was up and to be honest, it may well have been a flare. There certainly wasn't a bang or a flash. As it was following on from the orange lights - themselves probably planes - it just seemed a bit unusual. As I was informed at work, it wasn't a Close Encounter as I was obviously able to sit down! Anyway, ahem . . . moving on, "Slack Pete" sounds like an interesting character!
Time to get back to music, methinks.
Could it have been the A.G.M. of the Harwich Pyro-flatulence Society?
Yes, I hadn't thought of that.
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