A cloud over Wydon Water: a fluffy, white cloud like an ocean liner. The rest of the sky, charcoal smudges on a delftware ground, but this big, bright, majestic pile of mashed potato proceeding up the valley. The bottom is a great brick of a thing, the top like a chef's hat, some kind of ledge between.
From time to time there's a flash from the middle, lighting the top half in a friendly tungsten orange.
At first you think you're going mad. There's no noise, no rumble. So you stand by the sedge and cow-parsley, moths flitting through them like a cyberpunk city; bats -- proper Bat-Signal bats against the moon -- hunting midgies flying up, out the way of gulping fish.
Then comes a ball of light from the very centre of the cloud, then nothing -- a fuse blown.
Walking back through the estate, every TV is tuned to the football. Surely, they're not the same commentators as when I was a child. But they sound just the same.
Dark now. All that's left is a smudge of salmon over Scotland.
#northumberland