by Tim Dry

Created on: August 03, 2007

In all honesty I have only ever had one truly unique, magical and inexplicable event take place in my life. It happened sometime in the summer of 1961.
I am nine years old. Nicky Clarke, my friend of the same age and I are on the swings in a little playground situated on the cleared area of a grassy knoll in the Castle Grounds in Reigate, Surrey. These grounds are the remnants of a medieval castle that once dominated the town. There's not much of it left now, just a gateway and a small cairn of stones in the centre of neatly manicured paths and flowerbeds. It's a polite and tranquil place.

Nicky and I are attending Reigate St. Mary's Preparatory School For Boys and we're just over a third into our five-year stay. My friend has white blonde hair and very pale skin. He's smaller than I am and quite frail in demeanor. We're not really that close. We go to the same school, hang around together some times and share enough interests to get along.
The time is about the hour of twilight in early August. The sky has reached that wonderful deep gradated turquoise, with the trees beginning to change to silhouettes. The street lamps have just come on, dappling the view with amber like a Maxfield Parrish painting. The air is still and heady with the smells of summer. Directors of Photography call this time "The Magic Hour". Nicky is sitting to my left. We're aimlessly gliding slowly back and forth, our feet carving soft tracks in the dry bare soil under each swing. Nothing is happening, we're not talking. Just two slow and quite possibly bored pendulums. Silence. I look up into the sky for no reason and something is there in the air above me.
A black disc of indeterminate size is just there. I don't know how close or how far away it is. I have no feelings at all at this point. I'm just staring upwards, observing. It doesn't move or change dimension or do anything. It just is.
I have an overwhelming feeling of timelessness - not exhilarating or recognized, more an indefinable lasting moment. I hear silence and there is nothing else to focus on. I have no peripheral vision. The disc has always been there and is benignly unthreatening. Did I see an impression of blurred light that could have been the edge windows of a spinning vehicle? After all this time I find it almost impossible to say. I don't want my imagination or my wish fulfillment to interfere. Why did I choose that particular moment to raise my gaze? Was it already there? WHY was it there?
After I don't know how long

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