Saturday had been a beautiful day, cloudless, sunny and warm, and Mee Len wanted to visit her sister Mee Chee near Leatherhead, half an hour’s car ride from Kingston upon Thames.
We spent an evening putting the world to rights over a meal of chicken and salad, feeding the daily arrival of foxes the leftovers, and left for home about 10pm.
After putting my car to bed in the garage, we walked back to our flat through the gardens of Norbiton Hall, under a cloudless and for once a star studded sky. It is rare to see stars in London to high light pollution from street lights and the human population.
Looking up we saw two bright orange lights high in the sky, flying west to east.
Bukit Mertarjam, when the family were outside in the garden celebrating Chinese New Year. These 5 or 6 flame like lights hovered in the night sky, then one would suddenly speed up and move slowly away. It took a time that these were paper lanterns with a burner suspended in its’ balloon like structure, thus making it a hot air balloon, as seen on recent Thai Airlines adverts.
What we saw last night were not these hot air balloons they were traveling too quickly.
They were not aircraft waiting to land at Heathrow or just taken off, as there were two aircraft in the stacks to be seen and heard.
As we watched, the three lights went overhead with no sound. Helicopters would be heard, I could hear the two other aircraft.
As they flew off towards London the lights disappeared, indicating that the light source was pointing forwards and directional, thus we would not see the light from behind.
Then another light appeared flying on the same path.
Must be helicopters, perhaps military, that was the only explanation, a little too fast, but then we will never know.
Going to bed at 12:50pm, I listened to BBC Radio Five Live, and I caught the last sentences of a discussion of strange lights in the sky, but heard no concussion.
Were they UFO’s? index