That fireball, the one I missed...

I had a day away from the old blogola yesterday.

Well, why not? Increasingly I feel that it isn’t that important if anyone reads it and why would they? The other words are going okay and each word I write improves the way I write the next one – at least I hope so – so I’m not going to stop completely I don’t think. Anyway, here are the words I should have posted yesterday, but didn’t.

Zeus, or Jove, or Jupiter or some other god showed up last night hurling fireballs across the sky. Of course I missed it. I always seem to miss these things, well not quite always, but usually. If it isn’t the weather it’s the timing, and last night it was the timing. I didn’t even get the opportunity to call the rossers and inform them we were being invaded by aliens or some such nonsense.

“Police inundated by terrified callers as meteor lights up the sky across Britain.”

Really, terrified callers? How easily us Brits must terrify then. Now if we still dressed in skins, carried spears and didn’t have the benefit of hundreds of year of astronomy and physics I could understand it – but terrified callers, I ask you. “Eyewitness reports of a large fireball travelling from northern Scotland to southern England at around 9.40pm yesterday - Some phoned police fearing plane has crashed - People described a bright ball of fire moving across the sky with a large tail - Hundreds of people took to Twitter to report sightings across the UK.”

I really should follow The Met Office where, last night, some anonymous weatherman chappy tweeted: 'Hi all, for anyone seeing something in the night sky, we believe it was a meteorite.'

Yes, a meteorite, a fireball, a not-very-often-at-all event… and I missed it.

Funny thing is I often, almost usually, pop outside for a few minutes on clear nights and look up into the sky just in case I catch a falling star (and if I did, then yes, I would put it in my pocket). Not last night though, when some anonymous astronomer chappy at the Kelder Observatory tweeted: 'Of 30 years observing the sky, fireball best thing I have ever seen period.' I was fast asleep in my bed when it zoomed overhead at around 11.00pm allegedly.

Did he really need that period? Wouldn’t a simple full stop have done? Anyway, I missed it.

It’s amazing to think that a chunk of rock not even as big as a house brick could cause such a spectacle, a chunk of rock that probably came from somewhere between Mars and Jupiter and had been whizzing around in space for thousands of millions of years. Yes, half a house brick, hurtling through space for thousands of millions of years and popping into our atmosphere, finally going out in a spectacular blaze of glory just as I was going to bed.

It was spectacular, beautiful, astounding, awesome, breathtaking, glorious and seen by hundreds, perhaps thousands of people.

Not me though.