Hunkered down, for the evening, in my faithful old re-laxer armchair with my cat snoozing on my keyboard arm whilst I watched one of the inane 500 channels on Sky and trying to tap yesterdays blog on with my single, but reliable, index finger I considered that the day was done. Then Alison (my life long friend, partner, wife and sign there, there, there & there) got out of bed (for she does a real job & needs sleep) and shouted down to me that did I know there was "supposed to be a pretty good Meteor shower tonight?" "Apparently at least two a minute", she clarified, then toddled off back to bed.
Mmm, I mused, just a tad too chilly for such shenanigans and it would be mean to disturb the cat, who at the time was clearly dreaming of catching a fresh chaffinch to play with (least said soonest mended on that matter). BUT. Well it would be a shame to miss a 'pretty good' meteor shower, wouldn't it. I googled' it and found out it was the debris from 3200 Phaethon, an object which is thought to be an extinct comet. Effectively the debris hangs in the universe and we (Planet Earth) crash into it every 14th of December or thereabouts. Some what reluctantly but yet driven by curiosity (something the cat was showing no signs of) I got up, Meeeeowww! and clambered into my trainers then wrapped myself into my snug Puffa jacket. Having made sure all the house lights were off I ventured into the darkness of the back garden.
The moon was low but had not quite disappeared and so a deep, dark, indigo allowed everything to become a sharp silhouette. It was about midnight and there was an overpowering silence in tandem with a complete lack of even the smallest breeze. Complete and utter peace. The air was cold, but not uncomfortably so and I looked up to see..... a wonderful shooting star. Whoooph and it was gone in a lightening white, night, bright flare. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness I became aware that I had seen the meteor in a fairly cloud free area but there were incoming obstructions. Ever so slowly and like massive Zeppelins (even compared to Zeppelins) enormous cigar shaped clouds started to gently drift across my view and then seemingly moor right over my garden. A little despondent after such a promising start I found my self looking at the more local night scene around me. I used to make a point of doing this a lot in my last house where I had an excellent view of the whole village from my bedroom and the south downs beyond. I found, some time ago, that you have to make a concerted effort to stop and take time to actually soak in the glory of a beautiful night. The architectural silhouettes of the houses around me were punctuated by the Windmill a few gardens away which had a single square window blazing light from within and the acidic Sodium street lamp splashed across my flint back garden wall forming a stark contrast to the general indigo blue of the night. Every garden tree silhouette had a different signature, the Cherry trees with their long leggy strokes, the Hazel nut, messy, hard to read, the Yew, one great big black ink splodge and the Willow with its whimsical carelessness. An Owl screamed out and a dog replied. The stars had all but gone now, so I returned to the comfort of old faithful.
About an hour later I finally resolved to go to bed and had an urge to have one last look at the sky to see if the 120 meteors an hour was a possibility. Trainers back on, as too the quilted coat and then a fumble through a pitch black room to get to the back door. As I opened the door I was met by the same sharp fresh air and this time the darkness was overwhelming, as too was the silence. Paul Simon was right, there is a sound of silence, one that words will never be able to describe, but it is so rare to find it and it is accentuated by the richness of the dark, matt blackness of a moonless night. The silhouettes had all gone and the tree signatures all rubbed out, I couldn't even see my own feet, the darkness was everywhere until I looked to the Heavens.
Thousands, no Millions, naaaaaa, Billions of stars filled the sky and not a single cloud. Gob-smacking. Just simply Gob-smacking. The Plough, Cassiopeia, the Pleiades and the magnificent constellation of Orion burst out of the black sky as bright as could be and in the background the incredible haze of stars that is the Milky Way almost like a ghostly spectre hanging in the darkness, tonight it was at its best, truly astounding. Then Whooooph. A Meteor flashed in & out of view in no more than a second, then a minute later another and another, then another shot straight through Orion's belt. I watched the blazing lights for another 20 minutes all the time soaking up the scene in its entirety, we are not on this earth for long and if you have never placed yourself into the awesomeness of a crispy clean, clear, unworldly windless night then you need to make time to do so. But just doing so is not enough you need to use your brain to register AND assimilate every thing that your eyes see, your nose smells, your ears hear and most importantly, my friend, what your heart feels and then you too will have had a night of true illumination.
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