As I stood in the garden just now, gazing and trying to clear
my focus, I realised they’d gone, again. Hundreds of pages in and thousands to go, I
was clearing the air, as it were, after a miserable morning here in the
drizzled smoke. Silence.
I was scanning up at the traffic, the usual beacon twirlers
and inbound, the spy in the sky sniffing to assist social media assassins and for
what knows since I have not seen anyone arrested but thousands aided, all the
traffic that has amused my eye since I was a lad way back when, far, far away
staring up and the Red Arrows, in a tight vic, formating on their logistics, Victor if I remember correctly, and they flew right over my
back garden at approx 30,000ft direct from showing the Norte Americanos how you
really navigate the air. I had watched them as they came over the horizon,
stark white contrails upon the sky. I watched them head south west as far as I
could and then it was back to clocking German/Dutch F104s pissing around Prestwick. Well I might have been a tad awe struck that
they were right over my lawn and the altitude might have gone to my head but they were there alrighty. In formation,
high in the beautiful, like PRU blue, only red.
About 3pm I was standing there beside my concrete owl, I
call it Moloch just to phukkoph the gods, wondering at the silence above.
Nothing outbound from Heathrow. No Elstree heroes. No black helicopters
overhearing. No MiHiSkipilots. De nada.
Only yesterday they put on a marvellous unusual low level display
like Hurricanes and Gnats loading up, testing the free air, screeing, careening
and scooting around the eves, tree and chimney tops, round and around, whole
groups of them, wing tip stalls, cartwheels and yo-yos everywhere. Lead and
lag, hover and fall, all in majestic control. A thermodynamic symphonia in
feather. Occasionally one of them would cling to the looming school building wall,
at some vent points, for a breather I assume. This was in contrast to the
normal display hundreds of feet in the air. They were skimming and sliding, pulling
manoeuvres that Immelman and Boelcke only dreamed of, almost within my grasp. I wanted to reach up and catch some of their
magic that I might be transported away into their joy.
I have counted them all out and I have counted them all back
over their many, many generations knowing this day would come again.
I love them and I stood and watched and was transfixed.
Today as I was checking the tayberries, blackcurrants,
blackberries, raspberries and my orphaned blue berries I was stunned by the
silence around a Northolt rendition flight.
They’ve gone.
Sadness surrounds, summer is over.
All gone. I cannot be more rent.
