We don’t do much on a Saturday evening usually. This one is unusual. John came through from the kitchen where he was sorting dinner. I’m in the lounge watching telly. He says we have no gas. We have electricity but nothing to cook with and no central heating. Luckily, we have a brand new calor gas heater we bought last winter and was never used. We weren’t smug of course but we did hope our friends and neighbours were warm enough. Our chicken had been pre- cooked by Tesco’s finest. Anyway, new houses are being built at the top of the village and causing all sorts of mayhem. After a couple of phone calls we find out that a builder with a monster mechanical digger has dug through a pipe he should have missed. Further research on the council website inform us at least one hundred people had already been evacuated with many more having to do the same. We could be cut off for days. The outlook was gloomy. We took a walk up to the building site where a lot of people congregated, mainly for the novelty of the situation. Rumours circulated with esoteric conviction. This is going to cost the builders a fortune, they’ll ‘no get away wi this. When this happened in Edinburgh the place had no fuel for days. The council billed the builders for millions of pounds. It’s amazing the knowledge people have. The trains have stopped a mile along the track. People are being bused to Edinburgh. Opinions were being raised by the crowd, each one more fantastic than the last. Then we see them, Herb, Bert and Ralphie waving to us through an incomplete upstairs bedroom, swinging on plastic sheeting that maybe would become a window. Happy and joyful, flying in the air with the billowing tarpaulin like acrobats. They really are very athletic. I was just going to comment on this, then I looked at the expression on John’s face. Maybe now is not the time. The crowd looked skyward to see the aliens flying from window to window dressed in their favourite onesies. Onesies that were visible from space. Glow in the dark. Orange and lime green. The on lookers screamed. They couldn’t do anything else, nobody was prepared for this situation. It hadn’t cropped up in any council training manuals. The workmen with hi -viz waistcoats and clipboards phoned their bosses for instruction. I overheard one say that their heads were quite big, wobbling about on scrawny necks. Another was very blunt in saying Look mate, what the xxxx do you want us to do here? Wrestling with aliens is no part of my job description. You need the authorities for this yin bud. I thought that was fair enough. You would pass something like this on to someone else, wouldn’t you?
We looked along the road which was now closed to daily traffic. Fire engines, police cars and ambulances lined up outside the park and ride. The sirens had abated to be replaced with the noise of army trucks filled with squaddies rolling up the loan. Bedlam had just visited a sleepy village in Scotland. The police cordoned off the area for two emergencies, a major gas leak and an Alien invasion. The various agencies involved couldn’t make up their minds which emergency was greater, so they argued about it, filling the time until someone done something. The frail and the elderly were packed off to the community centre to be met with blankets, pillows, hot soup and sandwiches prepared by the local WRVS. It turned out later, lager and vodka were flowing free courtesy of the local miner’s welfare who also provided an old Karaoke machine.
It got scary when the government scientists appeared wearing white baby grows and beekeeper hats. It was like a scene from E.T. John and I were frightened for our wee monsters, if the scientists got a hold of them there would be no saying what would happen to them. They are not specimens we shouted. Sympathetic people close to us shouted the same. I liked these people, I could rely on them. We all had the same goal, being to save the aliens from the bad men. They started a save the alien chant that Green Peace would have been proud of. Or those women at Greenham Common who had nothing to do after their sprogs had decamped to university. We then heard Put our Gas Back On chants but they didn’t seem to have the same conviction. This was Saturday night entertainment after all in Sleepyville. Even those imbibed with alcohol that rolled out of the community centre didn’t have enough oomph necessary for a good old protest. Where was Bob Dylan when you needed him? Bob Marley would have done, you know, with his Redemption Song.
I bumped into a big sqaddie of immense proportions as I was trying to breach the ring of security wrapped around the new builds. He wasn’t letting me through. For goodness sake I blurted out to him, they are only a couple of aliens, and if you all want to act tough, you really don’t want to upset them. I’ve met their parents and they are very nice in a social situation but I’m not sure how they would react to armed response. Guns don’t usually quell situations. I had to shut up. I’d said too much. He mumbled something and gripped his gun like I was some major threat to national security. It was all out of control. Next thing a huge ball of light crossed the sky oscillating a rainbow of colour trumping any display of an aurora borealis. Everyone looked to the sky and made all those ooh and aah noises usually accompanied by a good bonfire night. The display was truly wonderful. I thought we had the crowd onside, then the bulb dropped rapidly, reacting to earth’s gravity and crashed in Strawberry Corner. The hi pitch of broken glass, magnified a trillion times made the onlookers reach for their ears and scream. When they ran out of scream the silence was palpable. Everyone looked at each other, bewildered, disbelieving, unable to make sense of the thing that had just happened. Had they all been part of the same dream? What exactly had made most of the village congregate at the park and ride on a Saturday night? It slowly came to some of them, we had no gas. Aye, that’s right, I remember that. We were just going to have our tea. Right enough. That’s it. The steamers came out of the club and the community centre at the same time. It was dark now. They looked up at the moon as one. It really was very bright tonight.