Thank you for reading my story, I hope that you enjoy it. Love Mica xx, Yorkshire England.
All comments good or bad welcomed. I will try and reply to each and every one but please note that all email comments from an invalid email address will be deleted immediately and will not be read.
This is a further story in the Dales series. It can be read standalone.
I was sitting in my open doorway at the cottage drinking a tea. I was alone and so I had made a pot of Lapsang Souchong tea using my loose leaves, leaves made such a better tea than bags, a real roundness to the flavour. I was just watching the clouds as they rolled across the sky, they had quite the speed about them today and I wondered if a storm was coming in; it didn't matter to me, I was going to be here for a few days, I had some spreadsheets that I wanted to rework for my Government contract, and the peace and quiet at the cottage did allow me to get more done than back at home.
Home, that was moot. These days I spent more time here in the desolation and isolation of the Autumnal dales than I did back in the suburban home that Mik and I shared. Mik was doing his thing. He had a girlfriend now, and she was not one for isolated Yorkshire cottages, no, she wanted to go to town in the evenings and 'hang' -- whatever that meant. I could understand it, it is only when you have a few years under your belt that you can appreciate the peace and quiet, and don't feel the need to be out and about and doing stuff all the time, like the youngsters did.
Something caught my eye, I wasn't sure what, it was as if something flew across the sky at a tremendous speed, but I was uncertain. It must have been a trick of the light, nothing moves that fast, and if it did, surely there would be a sonic boom. I could see no signs of its passage, no contrail, nothing to prove my eyes had seen something.
I shrugged, I must be mistaken, just an odd flash. Perhaps a distant lightening bolt. I went back to cloud watching, some clouds were boiling up into fluff and then seemed to thin and dissipate, it was, well for me any way, fascinating to watch. I was musing as to whether I should visit with Fay and Elvina when my attention was caught by something coming at my drive at speed.
It was an old four by four, an old Toyota, very battered and it looked as if even the dents had dings. It skidded to a stop in front of me and a man leapt out and ran across to me.
"Did you see it, did you?"
"See what?" I replied.
"In the sky, it was amazing."
"I am not sure, there was, I thought, something, but I decided it was a trick of the light."
"No, no, it wasn't, something unknown was flying through the sky, it was amazing."
I decided that perhaps we had both seen the same strange phenomenon, but that didn't give him the right to come bowling at speed up my drive.
"Can I point out that this is not a right of way and you have damaged my drive with your speed and skids. When you leave, which can be now, would you drive more carefully and not cause further damage to my property."
"What? Oh goodness woman, that was far more important than a bit of grass."
"No, not to me it wasn't. Now, if there is nothing else, you can carefully turn and drive back slowly to the public roads. Thank you."
He had annoyed me. My driveway and I take great care how I drive over it. It is bad enough when Jacob comes up in his tractor with his great big treaded tyres, but at least he doesn't skid and tear my grass.
"You don't understand," he said. I interrupted him.
"No sir, it is you that doesn't understand. This grassed track is my private drive, it is the only access to my cottage. You have no right of access and you have caused damage and you have also disturbed my peace. I have no idea why you thought you could drive at speed through the countryside, there is no right of access."
He looked at me and then back along the track.
"I am so sorry," he said, "perhaps I could explain, I am Professor Edwards, and I am Professor of Astrophysics at Leeds University. What you think you saw was a UFO, an object that is unidentifiable and is flying. It defied our known physics."
"Professor Edwards, I don't care who you are or what you saw. You damaged my property and are in fact trespassing."
"Trespass is a tort not a crime, and is not significant in relation to what we saw."
"What is significant is the damage to my drive. I would like you to leave."
Perhaps, I wondered, I should put a lockable gate across my drive.
He turned and got into his Toyota and slowly turned it around and returned down my drive. I looked at the damage, it was, to be fair, only slight, just some skid marks, and that would grow over. But my drive won't be able to cope with people skidding along it time and again.
UFO indeed. So what? Unless the UFO chooses to stop and greet us, then I doubted there was much that we could do. Their science was indeed more advanced than ours, and if they had weapons, they would make ours seem insignificant, I shrugged, closed my door and went back to redesigning my spreadsheets. Dinner was a jacket potato that had been in the oven all afternoon. The outside was crispy and the inside soft and fluffy, just the way I love it. I added butter and then grated cheese and curled up in my armchair and just using a fork I enjoyed the cheesy potato treat.
I think I dozed it had become dark outside, and I was startled to hear my door knock. I don't get visitors at night, not ones that knock my door anyway. I took my torch from off the kitchen table and turned it on. As I opened the door, I shone the light right onto the face of the person stood there. I didn't want any surprises, and my thinking was that the torch in their face would disorient them sufficiently that I could defend myself if required. I had a fire extinguisher next to the door, and they seemed to be an effective weapon in films and TV programmes.
It was the professor from earlier.
"Goodness sake woman, get that light out of my eyes," he exclaimed. I lowered the torch.
"What are you doing here, I told you this is private land."
"I need you to look at something, honestly, it is important."
I stepped outside and pulled the door to behind me so that I could better acclimatise to the dim light outside.
"Look over there. The star."
I looked where he was pointing, there was a bright star that I didn't recall seeing before. My first though was that Betelgeuse had finally gone nova, then I realised that wasn't the constellation of Orion.
"Okay, that star shouldn't be there." Well, it shouldn't and he was a professor of Astronomy and he should know that.
"No, it shouldn't, and it isn't a star."
"Helicopter with its searchlight on?"
"No. It is silent. If it were a helicopter, out here with no competing background noise, I would expect us to hear a helicopter engine."
