🛸 Wednesday 2nd July - World UFO Day Dispatch 🛸

By Virgil Twobyfour
Amateur Cloud-Spotter, Semi-Professional Stargazer

Young Keith just burst into my potting shed, eyes like saucers and hair standing on end as if someone had tried to power him up with a car battery, and announced that today is World UFO Day. Well, that set my thoughts whirring like an old ceiling fan after too much tea. Of course, you do not spend a lifetime in and around the Little Country - or, for that matter, in Section Peculiar - without gathering a truly absurd assortment of odd encounters.

I remember one particular summer evening back in 1952 - I shan’t say where exactly, let us call it REDACTED - when myself and the Major were on a perfectly routine observation detail up on REDACTED Hill. The sky was dark, crickets making a chorus, when up in the clouds appeared a silvery shimmer that moved not like a plane, nor a bird, nor any swarm of bees I have ever met - and I have known some very opinionated bees. It hovered there, eerily silent, then shot off faster than Mrs Trubshaw when there’s a seed sale on. Major took one look, rubbed his chin, and muttered, “That’ll probably cause havoc in the barley.”

And then there was the peculiar blue light that chased Mr Frowst’s bicycle all the way home from the Dog & Fax one chilly September evening. Poor soul spent the next week convinced someone had spiked his pipe tobacco with fairy dust. Villagers swore they had seen similar blue glimmers on the lane up to the church, and Mrs Peasegood still insists a glowing orb chased her across the cricket green, humming the theme from Coronation Street. No one believed her, of course - until they dug up a smoking divot shaped like her favourite hat.

I also recall the summer I spent in REDACTED working on a delicate case that involved a device which, according to its manual - mostly crayon drawings and words like “WHOOSH” - had absolutely no business existing in this century or this solar system. After a few sleepless nights and one extremely confused hedgehog with a light bulb balanced on its nose, I decided not to mention it in polite company.

Of course, my favourite story must be from one particularly foggy morning by Wyrm Pond when Old Jack Slopbucket swore blind that a flying saucer parked itself neatly by his cabbage patch. Claimed little green chaps offered him a jelly baby and then vanished - leaving nothing but an unidentifiable footprint and the eerie scent of boiled cabbage and jam. Mrs Slopbucket insists he just fell asleep under his greenhouse bench and dreamed the whole thing. But those who saw him stumble into the village shop afterwards - one wellington on backwards and the other missing entirely - say he had that peculiar look about him, as if he had been elsewhere and back.

And let us not forget my own little scrape with what may - or may not - have been an alien visitor, back in the late 70s when I was roped into looking into some odd crop circles on Farmer Noggle’s north field. I was out there in the drizzle with my trusty torch and a pocketful of oatcakes when - poof - a light appeared. Then poof again - I was home, oatcake-less and wondering why my watch was set three hours into the future. Nothing to worry about, mind you. Probably just a glitch. Or perhaps some experimental village entertainment committee prank. Either way, my gooseberries never grew quite the same after that.

Whether it is starry visitors, peculiar will-o’-the-wisps, or just the collective imagination of a village that has never been short of gossip, I reckon the world is all the richer for a few mysteries. Truth is, most of us rarely look up unless prompted - and World UFO Day is as fine a reason as any to do so. Even if the only thing hovering overhead tonight is a bemused pigeon.

Your ever-watchful neighbour under the strangeness,
Virgil 🛸