The singing moors

The sky cleared up early Thursday morning so I had a look to see if I could see some of the Perseid meteor shower. We are currently on our annual passage through the debris left behind by the comet Swift-Tuttle. Before I saw any meteors the first thing I noticed was how bright and big Mars was. Later on this month Mars will be as close to Earth as it has been for nearly 60,000 years. It looked really close now so I don't know what it will look like in 12 days time. Then I saw the first shooting star; a quick line of light turning red. It was hardly there for a fraction of a second. I opened the window to lessen the glare and saw some more meteors, fainter ones this time, some so quick they were gone before my eye could centre on them. Then something spooky started. Carried on the wind I could hear singing, like crowd noise from 50-100 people. Sometimes you can hear crowd noise from Ewood Park, half a mile down the road but not at 03:00 a.m. in the morning. It didn't sound like noise from a loud tv - it sounded just like a large group of people chanting a cheerful song. The next day I told my family and they told me that the local news had run a piece about a large gathering of folk that had formed on the moors to watch the Perseid meteor show. It must have been them singing, the voices carried down on the warm night wind.