Landing lights

A few days ago, I was walking home late at night, noticing the starless night sky of the city. Suddenly a huge shape drifted across the milky blackness above. I was amazed to see the undercarriage of an aeroplane glide over the patch of sky above my head, slow moving and low, so that it seemed to barely scrape over the buildings. It's not an unusual sight normally, but six days of quiet clarity were enough to make the familiar strange again.

It made me wonder how people must have felt the first time they saw these sleek metal forms wheel above their heads, dominating the land, seeing more than those below could ever see. For many in London, the first sight of an aeroplane in the sky would have been wartime bombing raids, adding blind terror to the amazing sight of humans projected through the air in thin metal shells. Flying miraculously, not falling as expected - at least not unless they were caught in the net of anti-aircraft fire.

The red and green landing lights wink their acknowledgement of the ocean-going liners that these sky-ships replaced. Red for Port, green for Starboard. It must have been a surreal moment, the first time a plane sailed low above the heads of watching humans below. The world turned upside down: ships in the air, the sky became the sea.