Catch a Falling Star

Today

Last night we decided to sit out late to try to catch some of the lightshow known as the Perseid meteor shower. We don't have much light pollution in Oakhill, although we do have a lot of trees which slightly obscured our view of the sky.

The night was warm, there was no moon, the sky was filled with stars and we seemed to be sitting right under the Milky Way. After an hour the clouds began to creep across and we went indoors.

During that time we saw 2 shooting stars.... Hardly a shower, more like a couple of drops,

In My Day

Back in 1969 on my great hitch-hiking holiday, I spent a week or so in Crete. We stayed at the (then) hippie resort of Matala. There were lots of other hitch-hikers and travellers and we joined a loose group of about half-a-dozen Americans. The days were hot and the nights dry and warm. There was no point in trying to find accommodation (anyway, we had very little money) and the caves cut into the cliff faces were very stuffy and only useful in the event of rain.

So we just slept on the beach. After eating omelettes with raw onions and tomatoes and drinking local red wine, we'd lie back on the sand, quietly chatting, singing and dozing. Crete has a dry climate and at that time was undeveloped as a resort, so the night skies were black and clear. I would lie and gaze and gaze at the stars above. and there were often shooting stars. I don't think that I really knew what a shooting star was; perhaps I actually thought they were stars, not fragments of a comet. The show was wonderful and added to the dreamy quality of that time.

It's only now that I realise, the month being August, that I was probably witnessing the Perseid shower.

It's a slight compensation for the fact that a: I like to go bed earlier and b: the night skies in Blighty are often cloudy, that I have had this experience.