Horrid, green cloud

The good Beltane weather has been and gone. The TV forecast last night showed Britain blotted out by horrid green digital cloud. I don't know why it was green, but the effect was suitably repulsive. Mokie says there's gonna be a lunar eclipse tonight, but I don't suppose we'll get to see it.

Going off at a bit of a tangent, there was a report the other night about this new brand of street lighting that throws light down and not up. No more light pollution- that would be grand. We live on the edge of a huge conurbation and the sky- on all but the clearest of nights- is orange.

When I was a kid I found the night sky scary. The thought of all those stars being so far away just freaked me out and after gazing at them for the shortest time I had to hurry back indoors to be safe.

I was fascinated by those antique celestial globes which show the constellations as a writhing mass of mythological figures- men and women and snakes and other livestock. I think that played into my fear. The stars looked like points of light but actually they were these Beings- and one of them was a dragon and he was huge.

Auld Lang Syne

We went up town and ran into a ex-neighbour we haven't seen for five years. She's one of those people who wants to tell you every single thing that happened in the course of her day, minute by minute, with special attention paid to the zinging remarks with which she flattened recalcitrant colleagues who in her case- since she's a nurse- were usually know-nothing doctors. I used to take her daughter to school and feed the goldfish when she was away and Ailz and I would comfort ourselves in our affliction by reminding ourselves that underneath it all she had a heart of gold.