VIRUS-TIME SHORT TALKS No. 7: Star Gazing

No. 7 Star gazing 

I’ve been watching Venus, the evening star, since this lock-down started. I’ve seen clear night skies, featuring a jewel, beaming and twinkling, set on a turquoise cloth. Venus is descending now, over the neighbours’ houses. If she keeps going, she’ll end up in the carpark at the back of the doctor’s surgery, at the top of the street.

I’ve never done much gazing at the stars, except for occasionally looking up and going ooooh! I wouldn’t know me plough from me pole. But I do like them. They remind me not to get too full of myself, telling me there’s more going on in the universe than my goings-on, though those are critical to me. Obviously.

Turns out the evening star, Venus, is not a star at all. It’s a planet. Like earth, only more sparkly. Who gets to name the planets and the stars? And where do they get the names? 

Venus was the Roman goddess of love, beauty and fertility. Ancient pictures show a beautiful young woman with hardly a dollion on her. How she didn’t get a cold in her kidneys, I’ll never know. 

Then there’s Adonis, the Greek god of beauty, desire and vegetation. Another handsome youngster with hardly a stitch on him. If I gaze at the stars long enough, will I see an Adonis up there? Or a Dave? Planet Dave? Naw.

I doubt we’ll see many Venus’ and Adonis’ on the local beaches this summer. We’ll be at Step one hundred and fourteen before we get to that. Maybe next year. 

So, I’m going to make a mask out of my mankini. There’s a video doing the rounds of a woman making a mask out of a sock. There’s no way I’m putting a sock of mine across my face. As the mankini will not see service this year, I’ll give it a good soak in bleach and modify the sock-mask instructions.

The best night’s star-gazing I ever had was on the thirty first of December, 1979. Years ago. I was no Adonis, you can be sure, but a hardy boy, with milk-bottle white skin and a ruddy face over a ruddy beard, doing voluntary service in West Africa. Me and a yank, called Doug – had to be – hiked and camped from the town of Basse to the town of Fatoto, beside the The Gambia river. We camped on a bluff above the small town of Garawoll on that New Year’s Eve night and we pinned a bottle of Drambuie. It was hogmanay without Jools Holland. 

We gazed at the stars, countably infinite, above us. Though I wouldn’t have liked to be counting them. The town below us settled for the night, cooking fires and oil lamps went out. Silence descended, a silence that predated time. At first, me and Doug talked serious, but as the wee dram went down, we got giggly and more entertaining. I don’t remember a word of it. But I do remember the stars. 

Now I mainly do my star-gazing at the pictures and on the telly. Tom Cruise in Rain Man. Jennifer Lawrence in American Hustle. Juliette Binoche in Three Colours: Blue. Don Cheadle in anything. Crash. Traitor. 

Mathew McConaughey is in The Lincoln Lawyer, on the box. That’s tonight’s star-gazing sorted.

Broadcast on BBC Foyle, The Breakfast Show, 18.5.2020 

Available on BBC Sounds
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000j9r9