HOLES IN THE SKY

There have been some rather beautiful skies this year, especially during those rain-soaked days which immediately preceded the recent hot, dry spell, and I suppose that I've been far more aware of them this year than in previous years simply because I've been out and about a lot more than I usually would because of my seemingly endless hospital visiting.

A couple of weeks ago, as I headed out of the hills, I spotted a hole in an otherwise slate grey sky over the town in which I grew up, which was producing one of those "Spotlight of God" moments,  where visible beams of light beam down from a tiny gap when the sun bursts through.

It was the sort of thing that was, as the saying goes, "heavenly" and you can imagine that it would be just the sort of thing that might have convinced earlier, more primitive and unenlightened minds to believe in some kind of greater power living above the skies.

Of course, nowadays we know better, but, in the learning of it, perhaps we've lost a lot of our capacity for awe and wonder, too.

Certainly, as I pulled into the less than awesome surroundings of a hospital car park a few minutes later, some of my thoughts were far less wonderful than they had been, but I was able to pull my telephone from out of my pocket and get a quick snap of what was still a fairly impressive sky, and, although its magnificence was already waning, and the technology at my disposal was less than wonderful, I think you still get a slight impression of a fairly dramatic moment.