Guilty pleasures

Promised rain arrived Tuesday night and on Wednesday we had a dark, wet journey to Clifton Park where my treatment was completed in record time.

As we drove home rain was tapering off and I attempted some photographs. My skills are not adequate to the challenges of grey light, heavy mist and a wet windshield, but I am still sorting through the results and a few may be worth posting.

By late afternoon, the sky was clearing.

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So I took pictures of the Moon rising behind the wooded hill across the valley.

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As often as I see it, I feel compelled to watch, just as I always ran to the window to watch Concorde fly over, or a VC10 for that matter, although that was very different, of course.

One is allowed to have a variety of passions, I believe. Mine are almost exclusively for the natural world, but I always liked aeroplanes.

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A little while later when the Moon rose above lingering cloud, it made a pretty picture.

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Early on Thursday, a different celestial body challenged me.

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Distant planets require a much stronger telescope, or at the very least a tripod. I do have one, but it is a device I have never learned to manage and it is tidied away. I did consider trying it but needless to say, I could not remember where I had put it, even though I quite frequently come across it when I am not searching for it.

In the end, I did almost manage a closer shot than the above, but it looks more like an amoeba than a planet, with a chunk taken out of the top.

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Seven minutes later it had risen rapidly and assumed a different shape.

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If I was young and wealthy, perhaps I’d invest in a high-powered telescope to gaze at the planets. The Universe is so extraordinary. Pictures I’ve seen of remote galaxies make it seem so beautiful. No wonder people are fascinated. It is human nature to hanker after the unexplored, the unknowable.

How far will humans reach, eventually? It is my feeling that our poor planet will not support our kind long enough to make distant explorations possible and considering how mankind has despoiled every new land it has discovered, that is just as well.

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Why can we never be content with what we’ve got? Why not devote our attentions to the beautiful planet we inhabit, seeking means of survival that do not imperil it?

Why, when traveling to foreign countries must we seek what is familiar? Why must we have fancy hotels and resorts? If you don’t wish to experience local food and amenities, stay home. Tourism, of course, is a big money-maker but it is contributing to the ruination of our world.

As an ex-airline employee, I am uncomfortably aware that I played a small part in it. With the advent of wide-bodied aircraft, I began to realise this and perhaps I should have found alternative ways to support myself. It would not have made even a microscopic difference, but this is akin to the argument of those many millions in this country who do not vote. All together, we can change things.

At the very least you can say that you did your bit.

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So, I consider my admiration of aeroplanes and one or two other man made creations a sort of guilty pleasure. Nice but far from essential.

These days, I get far more satisfaction looking out of my windows at a mostly plane-free sky.

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