In the late afternoon the wind changed, blowing off shore in a near gale and our German captain decided to delay our return until morning. We cruised around to the lee of an island, anchored and broke open the beers.

We were still 20 miles from the Indonesian mainland and, as the sun set, were blessed with a sky full of stars.

From one horizon to the other, galaxy after galaxy of stars.

I lay on the deck of the yacht with Mark Andrews and listened as he introduced them to me

‘There, north off Pegasus, between Cassiopeia and Aries, lies Andromeda…Andromeda was the daughter of King Cephus and Queen Cassiopeia, and it was the Queen who offended Poseidon by boasting of her daughters great beauty…..so Poseidon tied Andromeda to a rock for the sea creature Setus …within Andromeda you find the great galaxy…there, you can see it tonight…that fuzzy patch of light…that is a galaxy similar to our own, but half a size larger…….this great galaxy is two million light years beyond the Milky Way, so we are now looking at the furthest object that can be seen with the naked eye…….. and Andomeda, by the away, was saved by Persus, who was returning from having slain the Medusa……’

There have never been better times than lying on the deck of a boat and exploring the stars with Mark Andrews.

.........................................................

I must tell you a little about Mark. It is important. I meet him many years ago when we both worked in Egypt. He has been my boss twice. My friend for twenty years. In this time he has introduced me to P.J. Woodhouse and stamp collecting. Together we have created cartoons and written songs.

I will always remember Mark for this: it is Cairo Airport in the middle of Ramadan and the fast is about to be broken – the first mosques have already started to call - and the fork lift truck driver has gone to pray and the weekend starts tomorrow and the men say, come back in two days, which means, with customs having opened my trunks, nobody can tell what will be left, if anything of my freight.

Mark, whose Arabic is good, has wandered off, leaving me arguing with the men and I am cursing him for that, when there are raised voices and a rumble. Then Mark comes around the corner of the warehouse, driving a folk lift, my crate balanced across its horizontal claws, a little gang of angry airport labourers running after him, screaming abuse. That is Mark Andrew.

Does Mark know about stars? Of course he does. But there was one question that even Mark could not answer.

‘Mark, are these the same stars we saw as children?’

‘I guess so.’

‘Then, where have they been all these years?’

It is a good question. When I was a child you had only to step into the street and the sky sparkled. Walk away from the lights of the houses and the Milky Way slipped into view. You probably haven’t noticed (few people have) but these days the night sky is grey. You see, we are as careless with our light as we are our garbage and our toxic waste. Street lamps throw half their illumination upwards, neon signs advertising foul soft drinks have destroyed the city darkness; great floodlights spotlight minor cathedrals and banish the magnificence of the heavens.

There is a triangle between London, Brussels and Paris in which you never see stars any more.

The same is true between New York and Washington, or anywhere within a hundred miles of Tokyo.  In fact it is true for virtually every human city. Million of urban children grow up having never seen the stars.

You know, when I was child we walked on the moon.

Think about that. We walked on the moon! What do we do now? We are content to put a satellite two miles up in the sky and use it to beam a football game from Rio to Europe.

A fucking football game.

And we once walked on the moon. But what do you expect? When you lose touch with the stars, you lose touch with your dreams.

I admire Mark. I love him. But I have my own depths and sometimes I can do things that he cannot. I decide on the boat that night, under a multitude galaxy of stars, that grey skies have gone on too long. Something will have to be done about it.

………………..................

I select Rome. It could have been anywhere, well, perhaps not Timbuktu or Rangoon, but any major city would have done. But I select Rome. The first two nights are too cloudily, the third it actually rains. The fourth is clear but too cold, people will stay home. The fifth is perfect and I phoned Mark in the early afternoon.

‘We can do it tonight’

So, at 8.45 on a winters evening, I am on the Spanish Steps. I have dressed for the part.

Pure white.

I must be noticed without standing out.

I stand there.

Silent and still.

It is my stillness that people will pick up on first. Look, they have already! See how carefully they step around me. My head is tilted back, I am looking up.

Do people stop and look to see what I am staring at? Of course they do! 

In fact this is easier than I expected, but then Rome proves to be an inspired choice. Italians love to stand and stare. They will even gather around to gape at fatal motor accidents. (In fact Italians have a particular fondness for fatal motor accidents.)

 It is so easy that it creates a problem. There are several hundred of us already, it is happening to quickly; I am ahead of schedule. The next few minutes might become difficult.

But there is no going back from here.

I stand and stare. Is staring the correct word for this? No. Let me explain what I am actually doing.

I have gathered myself.

Every bit of feeling, every emotion, every stain of DNA - I gather it and I channel it – and I project it. Project it through vein and artery, through skin and along optic nerve and into my eyes, and from there I concentrate my entire being at the sky. 

Every monocle of me is involved – and I do not just stare at the sky, I join it – for this moment in time, on these steps on an Italian evening I claim it – the sky is mine! Some of the more sensitive people in the crowd have sensed some of this. Others are just waiting for the show to begin.

We reach a point where our numbers create their own central frugal force. The gravity of our mass captures anybody passing and we spill out onto the street below. People arriving at the top of the stairs and see the multitude of silent, sky gazing people before them. They look up automatically. We have them too! They are part of us.

Italians love to gather but their excitement means they cannot keep still for long. There is the first murmur of discontent. I must start early. I am only 50 seconds or so away from where I need to be, but that is a dangerously long time for what I must do next.

‘Look’ I cry.

There is silence again.

‘Look!’

And they do look: for a moment, heads titled back, they too suck in a little bit of the grey empty sky.

 I have them but I am still early. One sound now and the magic is broken and the miracle I have planned will not happen.

‘Look……’, the silence is complete. Can you hear a pin drop? Who would dare perform such a sacrilege in this moment of titanic silence? Seconds now, one more second….

‘LOOK!’

And yes, on schedule, unplanned but excepted one voice mocks

‘But there is nothing there…….’

I have them. I have them! From here on this is going to be so easy.

‘Yes!’ I scream, ‘ there is nothing there … and that is the problem…’

There were video cameras in the crowd and I have watched what happened next many times. I did something as the clock strikes nine that I am not proud of it.

I snapped my fingers.

It was a cheap fairground magician’s trick and it was unnecessary. But nobody noticed because, at that moment, the lights went out.

Across the city as far down the coast as Naples the lights went out. Rome was plunged into a 200 miles black out.

Somewhere, in the computer centre that controls the flow of electricity across Italy and much of southern Europe, Mark Andrews came through. He did his bit. 

I don’t know how. The engineers. Did he con them? Befriend them?  Amuse them? Bribe them?

I do not know.

But Mark could find a forklift truck in Cairo Airport just as the Ramadan fast was about to be broken. This was always going to be within his capabilities. He got to them and the power was cut.

Rome fell under a black out and the stars came back across the sky.  From one horizon to the other, galaxy after galaxy of stars……….

‘There,’ I preach to my multitude, ‘ north off Pegasus, between Cassiopeia and Aries, lies Andromeda…Andromeda was the daughter of King Cephus and Queen Cassiopeia, and it was the Queen who offended Poseidon by boasting of her daughters great beauty…..

For seven minutes we have the stars and the world would never be the same again.

 ............................................................

The amateur videos taken in Rome made the news, the last quirky item after the assassinations of minor presidents and the earthquakes in distance wastelands – but the story was taken up and pursued and was given some gravity by the better magazines. When we repeated the act a month later, it was planned with the cooperation of Amsterdam City County.

Two minutes of silence and darkness. Unexpectedly we were blessed with shooting stars.

That was twenty years ago and much has changed. The British Parliament has declared that every 31^st of a month will have five minute of ‘dark’ skies. The European Union has issued new restrictions on neon lights and the masking of street lamps.

Slowly the stars are coming back. Last year Munich recorded 215 starry nights. Sometimes you can once again see the Milky Way on night time crossings of the English Channel.

And with the stars we have rediscovered our dreams.

The Armstrong Lunar Base has been continually occupied for the past two years. The first manned Mars expedition leaves next month.  And it is not just space. Our artists, our architects, and our writers are all excelling …… the human race has never been so vibrate. We have renaissanced ourselves.

But then, what do you expect? We are getting the stars back and why, if not to inspire us, did the gods place them in the sky in the first place…

=Index