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Press, 21 August 1978, Page 22

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THE NIGHT WATCH

A Timaru woman had occasion in the early hours one morning to visit the smallest room in the house. The light from the adjoining bathroom was| usually sufficient, but .she was surprised to find herself basking in an extraordinary white brilliance. Perhaps l the next-door folk were also on the prowl? Sufficiently intrigued to investigate. ) she looked' through the next room window and saw that the neighbour’s home was in darkness but it and the whole street of houses beyond seemed to be sunning themselves in broad daylight. In the distance a long column of grey-white smoke curled gracefully up into a quiet sky. Could that be trailing an invisible jet? She listened intently. No noise at all. A fire somewhere? No further smoke, no flames, no crackling, no sound or movement. It was most mysterious. Here was the impression of a bright, sunny day. At 2.15 a.m.? The world must'have turned upside down. To confuse her still further, suddenly high above, a red ball appeared to the right of the languidly dispersing smoke. Slightly larger than a tennis one and smaller than a soccer one, the ball was perfect in form and vivid in colour. The immediate vicinity bathed in its brilliance as rhe strange object floated slowly and gracefully to earth. Another curling column of smoke soared immediately upwards. Another red ball, the third she presumed, descenced lazily. Should she wake her husband? If she finally managed to rouse him and there was nothing to see, she had no trouble guessing his reaction. Anri from then on there would be terse remarks about

11 “these writers and their alrv-fairy imaginations.” ; She waited a little longer but the ; starry sky remained undistrubed and the pre-dawn light was normal. i 1 Thoughts of ringing the police crossed t| her mind but surely some patrolling t constable had already reported the eerie sight? She would wait to see if I newspapers or radio mentioned the ! 1 odd happening. She decided against . I Martian invasion, U.F.O.’s or other . phenomena. Her sense of direction j wasn’t too reliable but she thought the I signals, if signals thev were, had emanated from the distant hills. Had . they been out to sea, she would have .■telephoned at once; there could have I j been Japs — even Russians, spving , out the land. [ Later that day, famih consensus ■ agreed naturally that as usual, her imagination had been working ’ ; overtime. If. by any strange chance, it j I hadn’t, then there must have been army manoeuvres somewhere in the back country. At 2.15 of a Sunday ■ | morning? She couldn’t accept that. ‘I A few weeks later, a very relieved woman noted in the report of court [ | proceedings that a local fisherman ■ [ (who should have known better) had ‘ been charged and duly fined for [ i showing friends how three distress • 1 flares worked. Date and time checked ’ with the note she had carefully mad# 1 in her diary. She sleeps dreamlesslv now, no t) longer tormented with 'thoughts of s - some "Big Brother” spying on and -• menacing the important town of 1 Timaru. What’s more, her family • finally and reluctantly, have had to i concede the imagination implication, t Victory, if not at sea.