I’ve always loved looking at the night sky. When I was a child growing up in Cyprus, I would count stars when I couldn’t sleep. Lying in bed, I turned the deep black above me into a stage, and found men on the moon and horses dancing across the galactic plains surrounding it.
The marina at Puerto Tazacorte on the west coast of La Palma. (Copyright VisitLaPalma.es)
I was reminded of this in February when I joined a group of shivering astro-tourists for a stargazing tour on San Antonio Volcano in La Palma, the most north-westerly island of Spain’s Canary Islands. While we waited for the clouds to part, I thought about my childhood, and also about one magical night decades after in Cornwall when, newly in love, my partner and I had watched a shower of meteoroids tumble through the earth’s atmosphere….