by Paul Dice

Created on: December 10, 2007

Living and growing on the northern east coast during the 1960's until I left in the early 80's in, what was at one time, was a thriving seafaring and industrial town, with a history dating back over 10,000 years of human habitation, one got use to looking at the sky.

The evenings were illuminated by fiery glow on the setting sun into the sea and it's man made counterpart in the glow coming from the steel furnaces, extended the illusion of a perpetual sunset, framed by White clouds building into the sky from the cooling towers as if, to create clouds for the world was their only purpose.

These furnaces, producing vast quantities of steel, for export and domestic consumption and the construction of the rapidly expanding oilrig industry, located a few miles down the coast, brought the prosperity of a short-lived boomtown.

However, back in the winter of 1964/65, walking down the drive at my Grandparent's house is my first memory of deep snow and cold, black nights, and seeing, for the first time, a shooting star. This brief streak of light, racing to oblivion, triggered an abiding interest in the earth's sky, meteors, and outer space.

I guess it is these kinds of conscious shifting events that capture a child's fascination with the mysterious, something we either lose, as we get older, having to deal with the more mundane mysteries such as the instruction manual for the microwave, rather than being curious about microwaves themselves. Alternatively, we turn our mysteries into jealous gods, who will smite a child for asking a question, rather like a dysfunctional parent.

I would spend hours during the cold winter nights with a rather cheap and inadequate terrestrial telescope, resting on an old dartboard, nailed to the fence post. Grandfather's binoculars, a torch with a red sweetie wrapper stuck to the glass so I could read my sky bible, The Observer Book of Astronomy by Sir Patrick Moore, 1962.
The mysteries of life remain though, and they take on new faces, new names and new places and times. Sir Patrick Moore's book still resides with me now, possibly the only childhood artefact still in my possession and that child within, still looks up at the sky, still has wonder and fascination, and looks for meteors.

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