WHAT THE PAPERS SAID

This is a bit overdue, but... better late than never, eh...?

I was away on the day Neil Armstrong died... which always feels a little bit weird when a big news story breaks, or at least one that strikes a chord with me, and I want to know more about it without having to spend large chunks of my supposed break sitting in front of a TV set or screen trying to find out more about what has happened.

I was also otherwise distracted on the day he was laid to rest, perhaps rather fittingly on a day ending in the appearance of those proverbially rare events, a “Blue Moon” which a happens, of course, er, once in a...

Anyway, having found out the news by happening to notice a headline on an active computer which I just happened to glance across the room at over breakfast, I managed to “borrow” a TV set and catch up on the story via the still rather wonderful means of “Teletext” which still staggers along as an information source, albeit in its new and slightly less fun new digital format, despite all of the other, newer and far more exciting methods now available.

Anyway, later on that Sunday, because it was one of those exceedingly rare sunshiny days of last summer, we all went for a bit of a stroll, followed, rather naturally (and, because it was such a nice day), by a trip to the pub (which was a rather pleasant something, incidentally, I felt as if I hadn’t done in years…). As we walked into the pub, there was a pile of Sunday Newspapers spread out for the use of customers and I noticed a distinct lack of emphasis on the story of our lost man on the moon which was of course in direct contrast to the massive headlines which accompanied that historic landing 43 years earlier.

Still, because of my interest in all things moon-landing related, I was “allowed” to read the two-page article inside the dreaded “Mail on Sunday” just so long as I promised that I wouldn’t make a habit of it or, indeed, read any more of it. After all, I am getting to an age where exposure to such extreme and right-leaning ideas might just begin to rub off on me if I’m not too careful.

So I found myself thinking about humanity’s trips to the moon, and found myself feeling all rather melancholy, and not simply because of the loss of one of those great pioneers, but also a little because of what we’ve collectively lost in terms of our ambitions to explore and look beyond this little blue world we live upon, and the limitations we set ourselves as we stare at our little screens instead of embracing the big wide universe beyond our tiny little obsessions of telly and footy and celebrity and wealth and war...

How far we went, I began to think, and how narrowly we venture now…