The English Astronaut

The English Astronaut - Simon Armitage

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I've always been very interested in things that the British do very badly, its not a small category once you start looking into it. One of the things I think we are particularly rubbish at, is space travel. When I was young I was of that generation that wanted to become an astronaut and had great hopes for the British space programme, and that I might be part of it, but every time we launched a rocket it seemed to blow up on the launch pad. It was more like watching somebody setting a firework off, in a back garden, in Lincolnshire. There is, I think, somewhere in England - I've seen signs for it on the motorway - a 'National Space Centre'. What ...

The English Astronaut

He splashed down in the rough seas of Spurn Point

I watched through a coin-op telescope jammed

with a lollipop stick as a trawler fished him out

of the waves and ferried him back to Mission

Control on a trading estate near the Humber

Bridge. He spoke with a mild voice: yes, it was

good to be home, he’d missed his wife, the kids

couldn’t wait for a shave and a hot bath. ‘Are

there any more questions?’ No, there were not.

I followed him in his Honda Accord to a Little

Chef on the A1, took the table opposite, watched

him order the all-day breakfast and a pot of tea.

‘You need to go outside to do that,’ said the

waitress when he lit a cigarette. He read the

paper, started the crossword, poked at the black

pudding with his fork. Then he stared through

the window for long, unbroken minutes at a time,

but only at the busy road, never the sky. And his

face was not the moon. And his hands were not

the hands of a man who had held between finger

and thumb the blue planet, and lifted it up to his

watchmaker’s eye.

from Seeing Stars (Faber, 2011), © Simon Armitage 2011, used by permission of the author and the publisher.

Simon Armitage

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