Aliens

UFO sighting – Sat 15th Aug

I knew it would happen eventually! Every day (more or less) I’ve been taking photographs of things I stumble across on my walks around town, so it was only a matter of time before I’d get a picture of an alien spacecraft. It’s actually quite small, so therefore possibly unmanned (unaliened? unlittlegreenmanned?). Or maybe aliens are really tiny, having evolved to utilise multidimensional space to keep their massive brains in another dimension so they don’t have to carry them around on their traditionally spindly three-dimensional legs? Whatever, this is definitely it!

Because it’s really only a dot in the photograph on the right of several women taking time out from a wedding (you’ll have to look closely, its the dot directly above the woman in red checking her mobile phone) I’m appending below a blow up detail showing the UFO more clearly.

At first I thought it might be a football kicked high in the air above Hove Lawns (but its too close for that) or a Pétanque ball from the court immediately behind the seating area (but it’s too large for that, besides, you’d have to be a super-human with no understanding of the game, or indeed any regard for human life, to have thrown a boule that high in the air). However, in the enlargement you can see it more clearly as only approximately spherical, more of an irregular dodecahedron really. It seems to be metallic, grey rather than shiny, probably pitted by space debris after its long journey, and to have several curved plates covering it. There is also no evidence of any blurring caused by movement, meaning it must have been more or less stationary at the time I captured its image. I must stress, this is NOT a photoshopped fake and I can provide the original raw file as proof for any news agency who is interested (for an appropriate fee).

I just think it’s a pity for the girls in the photo that several of them look so jaded, as I am expecting this photograph to go viral and make my fortune. But after all, it’s a wedding photo so they would all have probably had a good night out before the event, and the bride and groom (pictured in the left hand image) will be delighted that my photographing their marriage was the inadvertent cause of this discovery, regardless of the state of their guests.

ufo closeup

Alien encounter – Fri 8th May

Today I discovered an entirely new sensation. Soft and clammy overall but quite sharp in points around the edges, the feeling was confined to my head and was only fleeting, lasting maybe a second, followed by a sudden down-draft of air. Despite, or perhaps because of its briefness I was completely startled, unable to make sense of what I’d felt until it had passed and the cause had more or less disappeared. I don’t think I’ve ever known anything like it.

If you want to experience something similar, I would first recommend shaving your head to guarantee contact unadulterated by any intervening hair, and then walk along the seafront eating a prawn sandwich in a heavily seagull-populated area of the coast.

Call of the wild – Sat 21st Feb

Someone has started strapping soft toys to lampposts. I came across the first one a couple of days ago (see image for 18th Feb) then three more on the way to the pub last night, and then two more today. Why? What’s going on?

Possible explanations:

  1. A dark witch or wizard living in the area has decided to put a hex on someone. Unfortunately because of various EU/Health and safety regulations, it is no longer possible to get hold of live animals to sacrifice; pre-packed nuggets, chops, burgers and cutlets, while real flesh, just don’t look right, and so she/he has had to be inventive; at least soft toys look a bit like whole animals.
  2. Something similar could apply to a local mafia boss, who, faced with the same regulations and the impossibility of getting hold of substantial equine parts to leave in the bed of rivals, is instead leaving coded messages along the lines of ‘You’ll be the next one to get stuffed. Remember Luca Brazzi…’
  3. A couple of robbers have ‘done over’ one of the local toy shops, been startled by the intruder alarm and fled, grabbing the nearest boxes of stock in their escape. These boxes have turned out not to be filled with highly desirable and re-saleable sega-wii-station-play consoles (or whatever they are called) but the aforementioned cuddly animals. In a fit of pique the robbers are now making a ‘statement’ by leaving them around town strapped to lampposts.
  4. They aren’t toys at all but cunningly disguised aliens hoping that people will take them home somewhere warm where they will be able to spawn. This strategy clearly hasn’t worked as they are all still there.
  5. A local lothario has purchased for each one of his unwitting harem a soft toy as a valentine’s gift. Unbeknownst to him these love-crossed women have recently found out about each other and are hatching a plan, the first part of which is to truss his duplicitous gifts to lampposts. I tremble to think of what might follow.
  6. An ogre has moved into the area and is hoping to use the toys as bait to lure children to their doom, a bit like leaving a trail of sweets in the forest. Again, this is proving a failure as a strategy because Brighton, having become gentrified of late, is filled with children who can recognise the difference between acrylic and natural fibres and therefore spurn these cheap goods.
  7. Going back to the Aliens theory, it might be that the toys are actually the fruiting bodies of fungus-based life forms from an asteroid that will soon explode filling the streets with mutant spores.

I’m hoping this last theory isn’t true as the idea has scared me a bit just thinking about it.

Gargoyle – Weds 21st Jan

Over the past few months I’ve visited the beach on most days to look for interesting stones. I’ve found quite a few, including ones that look like a severed finger, a gaping jaw with teeth, a shop mannequin, a pigs snout… I’ve even stumbled upon a fairy loaf – something which would have been prized by our Neolithic antecedents – but none of these finds prepared me for what I came across a few weeks ago.

Most of the pieces I’ve selected have been relatively easy to photograph. Their charm has been apparent in one particular angle revealing the likeness that attracted me to them. Others have been more problematic, losing something in a two-dimensional representation because their objectness has gone beyond one facet. However, even these have succumbed to the camera, allowing one select image to sum them up, rather in the same way that a single photograph out of many, of an unwilling relative or loved one, will be able to capture them. For several weeks now I have re-photographed it from a number of angles. I even made a short video, turning it this way and that for the lens, but without success. I finally gave up selecting one particular viewing point and here instead have opted for a composite of several images to best display its appearance, but even these do not truly convey the experience of holding it.

About the size of a hens egg, it can sit in the palm of my hand as if made for it. Indeed it does seem made, more than developed through some obscure geological process, and while crude, it is perfect in its likeness of a small head; not just a mask, and not just any head, but that of a shrunken effigy, devil or gargoyle; a laughing satyr, something that would truly earn the appellation of a grotesque.

Yet I have no doubt it is naturally formed. There are no marks to suggest any kind of human intervention in its manufacture and I have come across other stones of the same composition, if not likeness. It happened, but how? Why? Is there any reason? Should there be one? It has sat on my desk for over a month now, looking back at me with the same wide smile whenever I glance at it. It delights, but also disconcerts me.

Strange Lights – Tues 2nd Dec

According to several unofficial sources there was an alien visitation this lunchtime. It was arranged, in secret of course, in a unique cooperative effort between the major world powers. However, the envoy from Thlagzzpt (who had travelled over many light years to bring us tidings of world peace and intergalactic brotherhood, the cure for the common cold and technology that would give us unlimited, free and renewable energy) made the mistake of trying to touch down in South East England.

Given the extraordinarily thick cloud covering today, they decided they’d got the wrong planet, mistaking ours for an uninhabited gas-dwarf, and went home again.