I love this weather.
I'd almost forgotten how good spring and summer feel.
Last night, wandering idly around the garden, barefoot and in shorts, talking over a cosmology exam housemate Khalil had taken that afternoon, with Khalil's rabbit, Bunny, frolicking gleefully in the flowerbeds, the sun was setting and the sky was darkening and the skyline was a light, rising pink. The air was cooling, the grass becoming damp. The dew was falling.
An ever-so-faint cry of "Shit!" drifted down from above.
A hot air balloon had snuck over the horizon and crept up behind us as we watched the sunset and talked of gravity lenses and estimates of marks and grades. The hot hiss of the flames punched in and it drifted over the terraced houses of South Hatfield, frantic motions of the silhouetted people in the basket showing that the stove wasn't doing much to slow their descent.
People came out of their houses to see it float by.
A memory of a TV show featuring a balloon safari in Africa swam through my mind, when the sight of the balloon wafting over the savannah had startled wildebeest, fazed giraffes and made elephants curiously indifferent. Was that what was going on in the basket?
"Darling darling look! One of those old Ford Fiestas! The angular ones! Incredible!"
"Oh darling what a shame, I'm out of film. And it's up on bricks as well. Damn."
hot air balloons seem like the ultimate epimetheusian sort of act. "we're going up in a balloon attached to some fire. how are we getting down? not too sure, really."