“Crikey,” I thought, “they are a strange couple!”

I had noticed them when we were waiting to board at Gate 10, Sydney International Airport. In truth I had clocked several couples of the same ilk, all middle-aged with the husbands rather older than their female counterparts. The most striking thing about each of them was their lack of colour. All the males had iron grey hair cut short like men in the fifties and they all wore glasses; their clothes were plain and drab, almost nondescript, as were their facial features. The females wore knee length dresses in charcoal grey or black with a white pattern, and they all wore black shoes with flat heels. Without exception, they had long grey, or mousy, hair, which each wore loose or pinned with a big black bow. They wore no make-up and their skins were ashen, belying the fact that they had probably been in Sydney during the recent summer heatwave with temperatures of thirty-eight degrees plus.

But it wasn’t so much their odd looks that made me think they were strange. We were on the night flight back to England, practically the whole trip was spent in darkness. Now most travellers try to sleep or watch films during the black flights – when they aren’t eating (which isn’t very often these days) – but not the couple at the end of my row.

“I hope no-one else takes this seat,” I had said with a smile and gesturing to the empty seat between us as we awaited take-off. (In the hope of having extra leg room Chris and I had opted for two aisle seats opposite one another.)

The lady with white skin and mousy long hair acquiesced with a hint of a smile but said nothing, and after take-off she took out her lap-top computer and started typing. The bespectacled grey husband to her left, and almost out of my line of sight, produced note books and they worked together assiduously during the thirteen and a half hours of the first leg of the journey, stopping only occasionally for the scant meals and a little nap.

“They must be co-writing a book together,” I thought, adjusting my eye-mask to try to block out the overhead lights.

There were some other lights, too, blazing in the dark and, sure enough, they shone on grey bespectacled heads and weird black bows….

“Maybe they are all lecturers going to a convention,” I conjectured to myself, returning to my seat and pulling on my eye mask again.

On the second leg of the long journey home-bound we were in the same seats – they, too, were heading for London Heathrow. Now she wore a different dress in black and white, and I had changed from white to blue but still wore my orange cardigan on top, like a beacon in the blackness.

“I hope it won’t be a full flight,” I said, patting the seat next to me affectionately.

She smiled back broadly for the first time and, after take-off, I opened the tray next to me so that she could place her notebooks on it.

The overhead lights continued to blaze after the snack and my two films, and I moved two rows up for a sleep on three empty seats. At length I came back to my seat and patted Chris’s arm.

“I think they might be ministers,” I leaned across and whispered loudly, “I think I saw a New Testament.”

At last the pilot announced the beginning of our descent and soon the lap-top computer, the numerous notebooks and the small leather-bound book with gilt edged pages were stowed away.

“May I ask what you are?” I said at last. “I think you must be famous writers, or journalists, or lecturers?” (Thought I’d leave out my final conclusion in case I appeared to be too snoopy.)

Now she laughed and shook her head of long mousy hair.

“We’re just Christians studying our scriptures,” she said.

“Not ministers?”

“Just Christians,” she chuckled.

“Well Bless you!” I responded.

I didn’t know what else to say.

“Blimey!” I thought.

 

It was still dark when we boarded the coach for Exeter at Heathrow Bus Station. Our breaths were like puffs of smoke. A few more passengers were picked up at Reading. A big grey person, wearing grey stretchy jogger pants, glasses and a big woolly hat, lumbered on and plonked herself directly behind us although the bus was nearly empty. Soon the stench of tobacco and body odour sent me to the other side of the bus, and Chris and I were once again divided by an aisle. And as the sun rose to reveal the frosty landscape through the morning mist I saw last summer’s cow parsley resurrected in sparkling white. The sun gained strength and the frost thawed.

Geoff picked us up from Exeter and soon we were home. We phoned Mum and she nearly cried with joy. Shortly my sister Mary came over with shopping and fresh made soup so that we wouldn’t have to go out again. Alien no more.