STARGAZING for the SOUL

I grew up in a small village in Fenland Canbridgeshire, although there were a few shops; a newsagents, general store and butchers; the nearest town is ten miles away. The village was always very busy, but lacked the hustle and bustle of a busy market town. During the day, traffic moved sedately up and down the high street, not just cars but cyclists, tractors and the occassional horse ridden by someone from the local stables. Surrounded by farmland, many of the villagers rely on the earth to make a living. For many I am sure that the Fens provide some interest and perhaps even mystery; but to my immature mind I just saw an expanse of crops and grass keeping me prisoner within the village. At night things changed. I've never been interested in learning the names of the constellations we see in the night sky and have never really been interested in learning how to read my future from the stars. But they did hold my captive attention almost every night as a child.

My parents live in a part of the UK that used to be unaffected by light pollution, so most clear evenings I had a fantastic view of the stars. Much like Spirit, the stars are great secret keepers and often late at night when the house was silent and I was sure my parents were in bed, I would get out of bed and go over to the window and pull back the curtains. The first thing my eyes always saw was a vertical line of three stars I called the three sisters and I liked to think that they had placed themselves there so that they could watch over me as I slept and catch my wishes. It was only relatively recently that I learnt that the constellation that I had been staring at all those years was Orion's Belt.