I was Walking through the local allotments by way of a short-cut to the all-night petrol station. I needed some ciggies as I had got home from my evening job and had run out. It was about 2 or 3 in the AM and it was one of those crisp Winter nights where there is no cloud cover, everything is beginning to frost over and the air is so clear you can hear a mouse change his mind at forty paces.
There was no traffic and no background noise of any sort whatsoever.
The allotments had recently been overhauled and had new metal fences put in to replace the old dilapidated wooden ones that my cat could get get through very easily and so use the cabbage patches as a toilet and the runner beans as a scratching-post. It was equally easy for the local kids to traverse the old fences... although for different reasons... one hopes. The reason I mention the fences is that the old wooden ones had been torn up and were still lying in the path and it was this fact that made me have to pick my way very slowly through the allotments and spend most of the time looking at my feet because I was literally walking through a minefield of broken and jagged bits of wood and rusty nails.
I took the time to look up at one point to get a general impression of where I was going in the dark and there, next to the petrol station, hovering motionless and silent above the cricket ground was a large light that I had never seen before. No structural detail could be seen within this object except that I could make out a red light and a blue light within a larger oval white light.
I wasn't startled I was just curious because I couldn't make out what this thing was. We have a modern tradition of young people 'borrowing' cars that don't belong to them in this area for some time and so police helicopters are a feature of modern life here. I initially suspected that this was what I was looking at. Please note that my faculties were working at this point... I observed a stationary object in the sky and assumed it was something mundane.
The thing is that I couldn't discern any sound whatsoever. This 'helicopter' was no more than 50 metres away from me on a clear winter's night with no sounds of mating urban foxes to muffle the almighty roar one could reasonably expect from what is essentially a jet-engine going at full-pelt... which meant that I would have to have something wrong with me to conclude that it was a helicopter.
The reason I know it was the distance I approximated is because of a little thing called parallax. This is the relative movements of objects in a three dimensional environment which no human being needs to understand in order to make work. We all use it every day in almost everything we do - it's part of our general depth-perception and spatial awareness. We use it to avoid traffic by making decisions about distance and speed, we use it to intercept and kick a football and we use it when accosted by a hooligan fists at the ready.
We all have this amazing faculty and mankind could not have survived without it... and so when I tell you that it was a simple task of moving my head slightly and noting the object's movement in relation to the fence in front of the cricket ground and the rooftops which I knew were behind you can believe that a child of five would have known the distance to this object... but not only that, this little exercise also demonstrated to me that this object was definitely stationary. The fact is that my second 'rational' thought was that this might have been an aeroplane moving towards or away from me... but parallax put it bang in the middle of the playing fields... and the damn thing didn't budge an inch.
So there we were... me looking at it - and it...
...
...yep, that's where I got scared. It occurred to me that whatever this thing was, it might be aware of me and so I decided to make my way to the petrol station. I mean yes, home was nearer but sooner or later I was gonna have to venture out into the dark and get some cigarettes so pragmatism got the better of me and I decided that forward was... er, the way forward.
Now we get back to the debris lined footpath. All this time (and it was several minutes that I stood looking at this thing) I had been stood still and so as I moved off I took the time to have a quick look down so that I might avoid falling over or more importantly avoid falling ON a pile of rotting wood splinters and rusty nails.
And when I looked back an instant later the object was gone, which of course answers the question that some people ask along the lines of "maybe I had been looking at something that was ALWAYS there and I just never noticed it before) like I walk round with my bloody eyes shut - some people eh?
Anyway I scoured the entire sky immediately and there was no sign of anything which I instantly took to mean that it had indeed been watching me and knew the instant to bugger off. (Another of my sightings has this feature).
So there we are - a solid unblinking object that comprised of three lights which didn't move for several minutes and which disappeared the moment I looked away.
I have hastily drawn a really crap version of what I saw but it will give you an impression of the layout of the area, relevant sizes and my drawing ability when under pressure.
pretty sure it is
