Shooting stars and pork scratchings.
In mid-August 1986 we’d lived in Mallorca four months. Lynn and Dave Hart introduce us to Skip an American builder who helped reform their house. Skip, and his team made dramatic progress with the renovation of Cana Cavea. Our home was now a stone tent with daily chaos from roaming artisans, rubble, dust and the general building activities. Fortunately, we now had a functioning shower room and a bathroom.
Amidst this mayhem, my Irish Auntie Mary, cousin Bernadette her husband David, and their son Richard were coming to stay. They were due to land at midnight August 12. Auntie Mary was the first person to hold me when I came into this world one freezing January at three in the morning in 32 Highfield Crescent, Brogborough. We had a very special relationship. Unbeknown to them, I had communicated by letter with The Royal Observatory. The night of their arrival was the peak time for the Perseid meteor shower when annually Earth passed through debris on the orbit of the Swift–Tuttle comet. No guarantees, but if we were lucky at three in the morning, we might be treated to a spectacular display of cosmic pyrotechnics.
When we arrived in Mallorca, we thought we were an unusual couple with two small children on an adventure, and we were. We wanted our children to have a childhood where they could roam free and experience a different culture, Mallorca offered the opportunity for that dream. However, we were not unique. In the Felanitx area, we knew five young families, English and German, on the same quest. With a common bond, we asked that they put their children to bed in the afternoon and bring them to our building site after midnight on the twelfth for a ‘shooting star party’.
At midnight on the twelfth, I was waiting for Auntie Mary and family in arrivals at Palma airport. When they arrived, we all crammed into the Ford Escort. With the luggage safely tied to the trusty Paddy Hopkirk LoadMaster roof rack, we set off on a warm balmy night for home. We took the undulating S’Aranjassa road to Llucmajor, then in swirling dust the bumpy unpaved road to Campos, and from there the narrow Felanitx road. I chatted excitedly about our Mallorcan escapade, but never gave my passengers an inclination that they were off to a party. On the contrary, I said we would need to get to bed when we got home as the builders were starting work early in the morning.
Arriving in Felanitx, instead of taking the Cala D’or road, the quickest route home, I took the old Cas Concos back road. There were two reasons for this:
1. This route was through winding country lanes in the extended village of Son Barcelo. With few farmhouses visible, it made it seem we were more isolated than in truth we were. It intensified the adventure for my guests, and of course, it enhanced my persona as an intrepid pioneer.
2. Approaching our house by this route concealed the party until our final entry into the top field of the property.
Arriving at Cana Cavea, the Escort’s lights swept over randomly parked cars. Beyond were forty or so adults and children on fold up sunbeds and deck chairs staring into a black star-filled sky. Headlights off, the darkness returned, and the stargazers recovered their night vision.
The surprise was complete.
We disembarked, and I explained the reason for the gathering. Introductions were made by torchlight, with the strains of Dire Straits’ Brothers in Arms drifting from our unlit house on the still night air. We waited in anticipation. Other than the odd lonely satellite wandering the sky, there was no other activity. Expectations waned, and I had the uneasy feeling that I’d assembled this group of parents and children at this ungodly hour for an event that might not happen. Still, laying under an awesome star-filled sky, there were no complaints.
Then, just after four, a ‘WOW’ went up. A meteorite streaked across the heavens leaving a wide golden trail. A little grain of iron, minding its own business in space, had been hit by Earth’s atmosphere travelling like a vacuum cleaner at 67,000 m.p.h on its orbit around the sun. Of course! The Royal Observatory had given me English Summertime, Mallorca was an hour ahead.
Over the next hour, meteorites came almost one a minute, sometimes two or three in quick succession. Some just streaks, others wide bands of colour showing their chemical make up. Gold for iron, purple Calcium, turquoise Magnesium and orange Sodium. Some tumbled, others split branching off on different tracks, others exploded in a bright flash at the end of their travel.
By five the show was over. It was undoubtedly the best I’ve ever seen, those who were there still speak of it to this day. As a pale dawn silhouetted the mountain monastery of San Salvador against the eastern sky, the stargazers drifted home, and we went to bed for a few hours sleep before the builders arrived.
I’d expected to spend ten days with Auntie Mary and the family working on the house and showing them around the island, it was not to be. On Thursday afternoon, I got a message via John Hadland that my client in Windsor wanted me to go to Bolton. They had a severe problem with an automatic X-Ray inspection system I had designed for them that was operating in a pork scratchings factory on a 24/7 production line.
You might ask why you need to X-Ray pork scratchings. People eat pork scratchings with an automatic hand to mouth action, they don’t actually look at what they’re eating. If there’s a piece of chopped bone in the packet, it’s not recognised, this invariably results in broken dentures or worse broken teeth and a lawsuit.
Unable to find a cheap flight in the Mallorca Daily Bulletin I drove to a travel agent in Calla D’or. In the peak holiday season, only one ticket was available, a single out on Iberia first-class to Heathrow. At £300, I phoned the client who due to the urgency approved the ticket’s purchase.
Early Saturday morning Sandy, Bernadette, David and I set off for Palma in thick summer fog that persisted all the way to Palma. The airport was packed with queues at all desks. I admit it gave me a buzz when the public address announced:
‘Would first-class passengers for London flight IB630 please go to gate eleven”.
There was no queue. Sandy and I made an emotional goodbye, but now she wasn’t alone.
On the plane I sat next to a 6 or 7-year-old boy named Adam, his dad worked for Sun Life, they had an apartment in Cala D’or, his dad always got lost in Felanitx. Adam’s favourite book was Shadow the Sheepdog by Enid Blyton, strangely that was also mine as a child. I asked him if he’d bought his Flying Fortress tee-shirt at an air show. Flying first-class with his family he had no problem replying.
“No. Mummy bought it at a jumble sale”. I love that, just pure innocence.
Oh yes, Adam also showed me his swimming pool as we flew over Guildford, at least he thought it might be his.
At Heathrow, I took a taxi to my client in Windsor. No one was there except the accountant who gave me a lift to Slough railway station. I took a train to Paddington, a taxi to St Pancras, a train to Bedford and a taxi to Sandy’s parents in Marston and arrived just in time for lunch.
After lunch, without having a sleep, a shower or changing my clothes, I drove my Mini Metro to Bolton, arriving late due to roadworks and heavy traffic. I booked into a hotel and was so tired from travelling I went to bed. Early Sunday morning, I walked into the pork scratchings factory. The line manager walked up to me.
“Hi, Bernie. What are you doing here?”.
“You had a serious problem”.
“We did have a situation, but it’s sorted. The machine’s running great”.
The managers in Windsor lived in fear of the Chairman who was on holiday. The sales manager hearing there was a problem with their new product had to make a decision, he panicked and called me out without referring back to his client. Still, that was not my concern, I had an order number
So ended another episode in the strange double life I was living.