In the dark

I’ve been in the dark!

In the middle of the night, last night, I stood in the garden admiring the sky….It was dark, dark midnight blue and full of stars. My favourite sort of night sky! There was one extremely bright one which didn’t twinkle. Bearing in mind the Agent’s teaching about quality of brightness and twinkle-factor, I decided it must be a planet. My first solo planet identification!

This morning, I asked the Agent which planet he thought it was, telling him it was directly above our holly tree.

‘Oh’, he said, ‘it must have been Venus’. Then he pointed in completely the opposite direction. Apparently Venus was over there too. I didn’t realise that planets move about like mad in the night when you’re not watching. How does the agent know these things and I just don’t?

Quite often these days, I wonder where on earth have I been all my life? I keep running up against facts that everyone seems to have learnt in kindergarten but I’m in the dark about. Does this ever happen to anyone else?

Yours, feeling dreadfully ignorant,

On the upside however, I’ve been for another bike ride. It started to pour with rain just as I left our driveway but I thought it would be too feeble for words not to press on. I’m glad I did for half-way through the sun came out and the Poppy Bike and I dried off pretty quickly. I must have cycled through a rainbow. Although I didn’t find the crock of gold. I felt quite springy on my return so it was worth it.