 aerial by bernard wheeler i was jogging in the field not far from our house trying to lose a bit of weight when it happened it was a pretty evening and it was quiet the grass was bleached golden by the sun as my feet prodded into the turf and i made my way up the hill i felt my mp3 in my hand and my front door key jangling in the pocket of my shorts as a bead of sweat gathered above my eye ahead of me the sun bled through clouds and made a wall of light on the milky horizon the trees rattled around in the breeze and dropped twigs before the calm settled in a fox darted into the bushes and it felt like the world was standing still and waiting for the warm night to settle in for a minute it made me forget my breathlessness and my heavy calves and brittle knees pressing into the soft ground it was like scenery that couldn t be undone a setting that had always been there something pure i noticed a man and his son with a football in the goal across from me i was tracing the perimeter circling the dad and his son in the middle the breeze returned and sent a flutter through my shirt and blew my hair across my forehead my eyelids were frail and stinging from the salty sweat and then i remembered that i d left my bottle of water from the fridge on the side in the kitchen it made a sound like the end of the world it didn t fall or drift down from the sky it just exploded out of the trees and roared like horrible thunder the nose of the plane smashed a deep trench hard into the middle of the field before the incredible explosion of hard red flame and thick smoke made it all disappear i could smell jet fuel as the sound of the plane tearing through the skyline reverberated in my head the mass of machinery i never saw a single person or heard a human cry the father and son had never been there never been anywhere the football pitches were blackened grooves in the soft fields cut out for the machine s final resting place i see the fields now on a cold day made of stone with the memorial littered with pale flowers and brown leaves and can never really imagine how it used to look before issue 1 bernard wheeler 