Missing the Northern Lights

 I woke up on Saturday morning, early as usual, let the dogs out, made coffee, then went to my desk and completed Wordle in four tries. As always, I opened Twitter/X and posted my results so that a fellow Wordler west of Dingle might see it. I think he and I are the only two folks left in the world who still do this. But what else had he posted? Only the Aurora Borealis over Mount Brandon! I was delighted for him and just a little envious.

I sipped my coffee and noodled over to the WhatsApp family group. And there was another photograph of the Aurora. This time it was Leitrim Sister who’d caught it in the bog. Wow! Aren’t they lucky dogs in 26 I thought to myself. I carried on scrolling. What’s this. The Northern Lights in Crumlin? County Antrim! Where I live. This was my niece Neesh who’d seen the amazing light show. Her photos were the best too. I might have to steal one. Or two.

Photos by Naoise

Next to Facebook to see whose been looking at Nelly’s Garden and what do I find. Vee’s brother Geordie, over at Cardonaghy, only a few fields away from here, okay more than a few, I went on Google Maps and counted them, fifteen fields away but that takes into account that the fields around here are quite small. Anyway, I digress, Geordie too had photos of the Aurora and there’s me slept through the whole thing. Raging!

At least I had Evie’s concert to take my mind off it. This took place at Wellington Church near Galgorm. I passed Geordie’s house on the way and there he was, the lucky beggar, sitting sunning himself at his front door. Evie’s concert was wonderful. I did not take any photographs and was cross with all the people who did as they kept obstructing my view of Evie and her cello. The crossness did not last as the concert was so good. I was feeling happy on the way home and when I passed Geordie’s house we waved at each other. No hard feelings about missing the Aurora.

There were high hopes that it would be visible later that night which is why I found myself standing in a silage field with the Haribos at 11 o’clock, way past my bedtime. Ditto Zoe and the girls. Dave is a night owl so was normal for him although he’d be more likely to be on the sofa than a field at that time of the evening. It was not to be. At the crucial time the sky clouded over and there were no Northern Lights for us.

I was back down the lane, past the silage field today, all by myself, headphones on, plugged into a podcast, fast forwarding to episode 8 to hear my own voice in my ears. This from was the interview I gave at the BBC back in March.* I was slightly in dread of hearing myself but it was OK.

Later on, I listened to the entire series and I'd recommend it to anyone interested in the history of the Northern Ireland conflict.

* Ganching and I were both invited to take part in a BBC Ulster programme about the UWC Worker’s Strike.