The aliens at the bottom of my garden

The aliens used to come and visit me every Thursday night at 9.30.

It began on the longest day, the middle of June. It was still light after nine,
my usual bedtime, but mum had no chance of getting me to bed. Sammy from next
door had called round to play and we’d been given special dispensation to stay
up late.

Just before he went home Sammy dragged me down the garden path. “You must see
this,” he said, and pointed up at the night sky.

At first there was nothing there and I thought he was playing a trick, but then
a light appeared, followed by another, until the whole sky seemed to be full of
dancing stars.

“Aliens,” Sammy said, matter-of-factly. “They come every Thursday, at this
time.”

“Every Thursday,” I repeated. I never thought to question the fact that aliens
appeared in the sky at 9.30 every Thursday, because there they were. How could
you dispute what was in front of your own eyes?

In my memory we stood there forever, watching the aliens playing chase in the
night sky, but it could only have been minutes, otherwise our mothers would
have come in search of us.

Eventually the aliens left and Sammy went home.

The next night, at 9.30, I looked for the aliens in the sky. Of course there
were none there, silly, it was Friday! They came back though, as Sammy had said
they would, at the same time the next Thursday night.

I was watching through my bedroom window, lights out, pretending to be asleep,
which is how I’d watch them for the rest of the summer, covertly, secretly.
Sometimes mum would look in on me. “You’re very quiet tonight,” she’d say. “I’m
asleep,” I’d reply, and she’d leave, ever so quietly, as if she believed me.

The flying saucers appeared at 9.30 every Thursday evening for the rest of the
summer. I tried looking for the aliens on other nights of the week, at other
times, even setting my alarm for midnight and looking for them, but they only
ever appeared at 9.30 on Thursday. “Alien time,” Sammy and I called it, because
of course he was watching too.

We never told anybody, the aliens were our secret, they hadn’t travelled all
that way, across galaxies, millions of light years of space, only for us to
spoil their fun by telling grown-ups about them.

The aliens never landed, though we always expected them too. Why else would
they keep hovering above us if they weren’t planning to land? Sammy and I made
preparations for our first meeting with the aliens, watching every episode of
Star Trek and learning basic Klingon and Romulan. “We are glad you came,” we
practised saying, “Would you like some chips?”

Looking back, there must have been a rational explanation for the phenomenon.
We lived near an RAF base, so it could have been a regular manoeuvre of some
kind, perhaps there was a really special piece of kit, a mega computer or
special radar, that our base could only use for half an hour a week, on a
Thursday, just past my bedtime.

Or maybe it was my imagination doing most of the work, perhaps it was just
floodlights from a football field, for the once-a-week evening practice and my
Star Trek led mind turned it into a Klingon fleet.

Or maybe, just maybe, I was right all along. Aliens really did travel billions
of light years, just to put on a show for me once a week at the bottom of my
garden. My own, intergalactic red arrows display team.

If I’m right, then it’s really, really, super-important that the grown-ups
never find out. You won’t tell anyone will you?