Cars and Christmas Trees.

The walk tonight was rudely interrupted by the necessity of performing a domestic, albeit charitable, chore. There was a car parked outside a house near the pub with its tailgate open and a bag of shopping visible. Since there was nobody about I thought I’d better knock on the door and tell them, just in case they’d forgotten about it. They had. What’s the point of me going out at night in search of magic and mystery if all I find are cars with tailgates left open?

So anyway, after I left the woman reclaiming her bag of shopping, I had a good look again at a constellation I’ve been noticing a lot lately. It’s almost directly overhead and looks like a Christmas tree. I subsequently tried to find it on loads of websites without success, but here’s the problem: it looks like a Christmas tree to me, but it probably looks like something completely different to other people. When I searched ‘constellation like a Christmas tree,’ I got an illustration of a Christmas card with a constellation on the front that looked like a Christmas tree, only it didn’t look like my Christmas tree.

Orion, on the other hand, is now easily identifiable. He was ranged across the sky above and to the right of my house as I came up the garden path, and looked massive and magnificent. Saiph, unfortunately, was still hiding.