The light that dances.

My very first encounter - of several - with what I propose to call 'angels' occured in the early 1990s. There were no wings, no trumpets, no heavenly bodies. But it was an event so heavily laden with symbolism, metaphor, the metaphysical and the spiritual that it changed my life irrevocably. For the better? I really don't know... but here's hoping. I find it hard to talk about it with any certainty, other than to say that it happened in a timely fashion and solved a very particular, rather serious dilemma for me at the time. So thanks for that!

It's much easier to tell my second angel story. This was the most spectacular one, anyway: it makes for a better tale.

I was sat at home in Mellon Street, Newport, reading the book 'Ask Your Angels' by Alma Daniel. It could be argued that I was asking for it. I looked up from my book and - KAZAM! - there in front of me, hovering like an air hockey puck hovers above an air hockey board, was a button-mushroom-sized ball of golden yellow light. It was the colour of a Crunchie wrapper and floating with aerodynamic perfection. I gasped and smiled, and it swept this way and that, teasing me with its agility before sweeping around the back of my head, back around to the front of my face, then out of the living room via the closed window.

It was like having a super-agile firefly in the room. The warmth and colour of that ball of light was tangible, but not oppressive or too bright. It looked a little like Jupiter does through a medium-sized telescope. It was accompanied by a strong feeling of 'fun'. Whatever that light was, it was playing with me and I was being gently teased. It's kind of like it saw the book I was reading and decided to give me a playful poke in the ribs.

I was impressed, of course, and I think I was lucky. Not even my closest friends know this bit, but shortly after this event I appeared on a chatshow with Alma Daniel - the author of the book I was reading. We both discussed our experiences, and Alma concluded by saying that she had 'kind of moved on' from the whole angel thing. It was like the angels had made their point by making their presence known. And now it was time for them to move on.

That's kind of how I feel, too. I'll try to explain this a little better in a future 'Letter from Claptonia'.