Just One of Nature's... Foibles!
Ah, Greenwich. The home of the Cutty Sark. The home of the National Maritime Museum. Perhaps, most importantly, the home of Time.

And time itself, in a roundabout kind of way, was mu unwitting accomplice a few of years ago.

At the time I was still in a self-destructive spiral with the Mad Saffa. She was living with me in my house share for a couple of weeks, and one night we were doing that most exciting of activities, the washing.

Standing in the back garden, hanging clothes out to dry, she looked up in to the darkness of the Autumn sky.

“What’s that?” She said, her Durban lilt floating in the air. I followed her pointing finger, and saw a long, green light piercing through the sky.

Now, both you and I know that at the Greenwich observatory they fire a green coloured laser beam out at night time that follows the line of the Greenwich Meridian. It just so happened that the street I lived on had that selfsame Meridian running through it. So the laser went right over my house.

“Oh, that,” I said “well, you’ve heard of Aurora Borealis?”

“Yes...” She said, mouth agape.

“Well, that’s the little known London Version. Strangely, it follows the Greenwich Meridian, and you can only see it when the conditions are absolutely perfect. You’re very lucky, this is only the second time I’ve seen it myself.”

“But how does it happen?” She said, transfixed by this green line shooting through the sky.

“Oh, I dunno,” I said “just one of nature’s... little... er... foibles?”

It was here, as my dishonesty came crashing about my ears, that I was certain the game was up. I mean, foibles? Dear Lord, DiT! But no, she ran inside, grabbed the ‘phone, and dialled her mother in South Africa. Before I could stop her, she was excitedly babbling about how she’d seen the most wonderful natural phenomena.

Minutes later, she put the ‘phone down.

“Er...” I said, my eyes fixed on the floor “You know... It’s... Er... What you saw was a laser. If you look tomorrow it’ll be there. And the day after. It’s been there for the last five years. Er.”

I earned myself a kick in the balls for that one.
( Devil_In_Tights the *real* DiT!, Wed 27 Aug 2008, 10:10, Reply)