Zombies In The Moonlight
Last week, when my home broadband connection was restored (hooray!) I splashed out on a WiFi internet radio. It's a big beast of a set and allows you to connect with about four thousand internet radio stations around the world. For an anorak like me - who grew up listening to Short Wave stations - this is like a dream come true. You just select a particular country and then choose from an alphabetic list of stations. This weekend, for instance, I've been tuned to a station in America that only plays songs from Broadway musicals.
Best of all is how it behaves when you tune to a 91Èȱ¬ station such as, well, 91Èȱ¬ Radio Scotland. It offers you the live output as well as a chance to choose from all the programmes that are available "On Demand". I've been listening to last week's output from Orkney and Shetland and very good it is too. Yes, I know you can do this on your PC, but there's something so much more convenient about listening through a box that actually resembles a radio set. Call me old-fashioned, but that's how I feel. Stop looking at me like that!
So, this morning, the Zedettes came into the room while I was tuned to and a phone-in show about UFOs. A woman called in to describe her own encounter with aliens. Apparently they caused her car to break down for two minutes but, by the time it had restarted, a whole two hours of life was missing. The show's host suggested she try regression hypnosis to find out what horrible things might have happened to her in those missing hours.
I could see that the Zedettes were intrigued by this just as they had been by , which we had all watched from a bedroom window. They had demanded a rational scientific explanation for the moon's gradual disappearance. I had been able to supply this thanks to a handy article in Friday's Inverness Courier.
Trouble was, as we gazed at the sky, were we continually distracted by a light going on and off in the house across the street. This seemed to spook the children more than the lunar event itself. So, this morning, with a nod to Sherlock Holmes, I encouraged my offspring to search for logical explanations when they encounter anything that seems supernatural or magical.
"So, if a door opens in the night...?"
"Probably the wind." the chorused
"and if a woman loses two hours of her life..?"
"she probably fell asleep."
This moment of parental wisdom seemed to be going well. I decided to push my luck.
"And last night...during the eclipse...that light going on and off in the house across the street. What do you think caused that?"
They didn't hesiate. Not for an instant.
"Probably zombies," they decided.
I only hope they're wrong.
