The science of magic

One of the things I fondly remember about my childhood home was the view from my bedroom window. It looked directly north, across gently rolling Norfolk countryside. We were some way inland, but there was very little in the way of civilization beyond our house. Just fields dotted with old lime pits, the sand banks and marshes of the North Norfolk coast, and then the sea... all the way to the North Pole.

That window was my natural theatre. Summer days watching the combine harvesters perform their sedate ballet in golden fields sprayed with poppies, accompanied by a skylark singing somewhere high above. Winter evenings watching squadrons of geese blacken the sky as they returned to their night-time roosts on the coast.

At night the sky was inky black and free of light pollution, so my view of the night sky from my bedroom was perfect for stargazing (a privilege few children today have). I watched the Plough (over agricultural Norfolk it could never be a Bear, great or otherwise) as it wheeled around the pole star, and could even see and learn to recognise the fainter constellations of the northern sky, like Ursa Minor, and Draco the dragon.

One summer night we even saw the faint glow of the Northern Lights. It was that dark.

One night I was awoken by a rumble and a flash of blue-white light on the bedroom wall. A distant thunderstorm was making it's way along the coast. I watched it for a while, disappointed that it wasn't the showy fork-lighting kind of thunderstorm, when there was an almighty flash that made me flinch and blink.

A second later I saw it, rising out of a bed of clouds in the distance. A brilliant point of light, like a fallen star. It climbed slowly, throwing it's light on the suddenly beautiful cloudscape that surrounded it. After a few seconds it reached it's apogee and began to fall again, disappearing back into the clouds.

That's my story about the time I saw ball lightning. Well, at least I think it was ball lightning. I can't imagine what else it would have been. It was too high in the sky to be a flare, and was far too bright to be a plane.

Why am I blogging this? Because scientists have managed to create ball lightning in the lab, and it reminded me of my experience. One of nature's greatest mysteries is finally starting to be understood and replicated, but it doesn't make my memory of that night any less magical.