December 24 in the house was a bit chaotic. Final shopping included a visit here in London to the large Canary Wharf mall nearby. Little Miss WHBM, just aged three, was with us, because one thing consistently missed in past days there was a visit to our good friend Santa, who had a very nice little house right in the middle of the shopping mall. But oh my, what a queue. It actually took over 2 hours to get in, by which time the children were inevitably more than a little fractious. We had taken turns to go from the queue to shops etc, during one of which I bought a nice bedtime picture book
Santa is Coming to London which really can only be read on one night a year. It has typical illustrations, the sleigh coming over snow-covered rooftops under a starry sky.
So late evening Papa begins to read this out, quietly, in the bedroom, of course slightly embellishing the story line. Mrs WHBM
starts to roll eyes ! Santa will be coming under the stars, and we are to look out at the end of the story and see if there are any (of course a preliminary squint behind the curtains has taken place). This gets the interest, so at the last page we get lifted up to the south-facing window to look out. There it is, by chance, decidedly prominent, quite low down in the SSE sky (maybe Mercury or Venus). “Can you see the star ?” is asked. “Yes” is whispered. Mrs WHBM has gone rather quiet.
And then, by the most amazing coincidence, right at that moment another bright light suddenly appears in the far distant sky, slowly moving pretty much towards us. “Can you see something moving in the sky as well ?”. “Yes”, even quieter. It starts moving in the distance towards the right, and is followed without blinking. Mrs WHBM has quietly joined us at the window. Papa just notices a hint of some anti-collision flashing strobes as well … and now for bed.
(Thank you that crew of Alitalia AZ210, last flight of the day from Rome descending into Heathrow, for switching those landing lights on in plenty of time. And to an A321 designer in Toulouse for designing such powerful landing lights that can be seen from 15nm away.)
Happy Christmas all.