ALIEN ENCOUNTER ON THE TEARDROP LAKES

It was a warm, gentle, evening in June, and a lone cyclist was skimming along the redway on one edge of the Teardrop Lakes.

Brian, a commuter on his way home from Milton Keynes station, had had a very pleasant early evening. An office leaving party had started off in the work bar, then spilled over into the pub next door. As a result he had consumed a reasonable amount of London Pride. He had left London, he had thought, early enough to have daylight when he arrived home. However, in his fuddled state he had miscalculated by an hour. There was still a slight afterglow over towards Towcester, or would have been if it had not been drowned out by the sulphurous light-haze that hung over Milton Keynes, but around the Teardrop Lakes, the only useful light was from the row of lamps that ran alongside the redway. This was enough for Brian at present, but he knew that eventually he would have to enter darker parts of the park on his way home, and he had no lights on his bike.

This particular redway runs alongside the lake on one side, and the railway line on the other. An West Coast Mainline train crashed past at this point, on its way to Birmingham and all parts north-west. He reflected that, if he had spent another twenty minutes in the pub, he could caught that train instead of his slower one, and been home at much the same time.

There are four Teardrop Lakes between Childs Way and Chaffron Way, and where the brook joins each lake to the next, there is a bridge. So there are three bridges in total, and our hero had to choose which one to cross. Over the past six months he had crossed over both of the well-lit ones many times, in comfort and convenience. So it could only have been the London Pride in his system that encouraged him on this occasion to go over the other, less well-lit, bridge. Humming a cheerful tune, he turned a sharp right, leaning into the bend in a polished manner. There was an almighty crash and it all went dark.

What he had not reckoned with, was the different positioning of the bollards. All the bridges had bollards, presumably to stop people in Minis racing around the redway system. Two of the bridges had bollards on either side of the path, so that the inebriated cyclist could cruise straight through the middle without let or hindrance. Once of the bridges, the one he had chosen this evening, had a bollard in the middle of the path, so you have to go round it to the left or right. What Brian had done was to hit it full on, at about fifteen miles an hour. He was thrown a reasonable distance over the handlebars, landing on his back in the middle of the path.

He lay there for a moment with his eyes closed, mentally checking all the bones and connections in his body. Two hands; two feet, all functioning. One head, apparently OK. One back - complaining loudly. He opened his eyes.

Due to the glow of the streetlights, it's never very easy to see the stars in Milton Keynes, but out in the middle of the park by the Teardrop Lakes is probably as good a place as any to see them. They were really very pretty as they hung there above him, placidly looking down at this strange example of humanity. For a moment, he felt quite relaxed. Then he heard voices.

The first fear was that they might be muggers, but then he realised that they were speaking too softly.

"He seems to be unconscious," he heard from one of the voices.

"No, his eyes are open. Are you alright? That seemed like a nasty bump you had there."

He heard someone walking very close up to him. Then a light shone directly into his eyes, and he felt quite stunned. He decided to risk what damage he might do to his body, and clambered to his feet. What he saw was terrifying.

There were about five or six of them in all, about the size of men, ranged around him. He could not see their faces, assuming they had any, as each of them had glowing from his head a bright light, and all of these lights were blazing straight towards him.

"I'm fine! Leave me alone! I'll get my bike," he screamed. He staggered over to where his bike had fallen, and picked it up. He slung his leg over the saddle and peddled off. The front wheel had clearly been warped by the crash, so that the bike wobbled wildly across the path, but other than that it was possible to ride it. He charged off into the darkness, hearing the siren voices behind him:

"Come back!"

"You don't know if you're hurt!"

When he got home his wife did not believe him. She was inclined to the thought that he had suffered concussion when he landed on the ground, and insisted on driving him down to MK General for a checkup. On a Friday night, MK General is not the place to be seen to quickly. There had been a fight in a restaurant somewhere in the city centre, and the people who had taken part in the fracas occupied more than half the waiting room. In particular a large Geordie, with a makeshift bandage round his head, was shouting at the nurses to get a move on, as he was bleeding to death. He had two members of the Thames Valley constabulary holding on to make sure he did nothing too rash. Eventually the Geordie had waited long enough.

"I'm not waiting any longer," he announced to a passing nurse, "these ****** will only beat me up again when they get me to the station, anyway."

Thus saying, he strode out of the door, dragging the policemen behind him, and escorted himself into the police car. Brian, promoted up the queue, was seen more rapidly than he expected. He was given assorted tests, X-rayed, and pronounced to be completely lacking in the symptoms of concussion. His determination that he had seen alien life-forms by the Tear Drop lakes, however, led a doctor to take his wife to one side for a quiet chat.

"Leave it a few days. If he persists with it, ask your GP to arrange a scan."

So she took her husband home. He realised which way the wind was blowing, and kept quiet about aliens from then on. Mind you, he also avoided the Tear Drop lakes after sunset.

A couple of months later, armed with a brand new pair of bike lights and a straightened front wheel, he forced himself to retrace his route across the park going home one night. It was a little earlier in the evening than last time, but the year was more advanced, so it was just as dark. He travelled all the way across the lakes, enjoying the warmth of the late-summer air and the babbling of the brook - I'd describe it as something other than babbling, but somehow it's such an appropriate word for the noise - as it ran from lake to lake. He didn't see any aliens. The only intelligent life-forms he saw were the fishermen, sitting with their lines and little tents along the water's edge. Each one equipped with a torch on his hat, so he could see what he was doing with both hands free. Brian thought of asking them if they'd seen any aliens that June evening, but decided they would probably think he was mad. Reflecting that he was the only person in Milton Keynes to have escaped an attempted alien abduction, and that he had 132 letters from members of the Southern England UFO Society to answer at home, he pushed on a bit harder and raced back home.

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