I usually wake up early. Today I was working at 4am (after five hours’ sleep) – and got quite a lot done, too. Several people may be surprised to see the time of day on the emails from me when they wake up.
But at around 6am, while Tweet of the Day is on Radio 4, I am usually making a cup of tea for anyone who wants it in the house.
Today, I drank my tea in the garden looking for Geminid shooting stars. there were a couple of Robins singing, there were some wind chimes chiming, there was some traffic noise. But the sky was fairly clear.
I avoided looking south as the Moon (isn’t the Moon beautiful?) was shining brightly, and stared at the sky. I thought I saw a couple of small shooting stars but they were small and left me wondering whether I had imagined them.
Then I had a definite sighting – no doubt about it.
A few minutes later I saw a cracking shooting star rending the black of the sky. It was dramatic. I didn’t take it as an omen of a UKIP victory in May’s general election, or of anything else. But it wouldn’t get any better than that sighting. So, at 0610 I was sipping a second cup of tea and getting on with my writing.
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“an omen”
Better feed and tack-up the camel. You could probably pick up some Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh from Waitrose in Rushden – on 3 for 2 at the moment
The best ever meteor sighting was some years ago when returning from the Moss Rose pub in Kearsley. It was 10:30 on a summer evening and still relatively light when a bright blue meteor appeared almost overhead shedding orange sparks. It must have been visible for 2-3 seconds (a long time for a meteor) and could even have been a piece of space debris given it was moving quite slow compared with other meteors I have seen.