‘Dear Michael Collins …’ by Ms Paige Turner
Dear Michael Collins,
On my fifteenth birthday, Monday 21st July 1969, I got up in the early hours to watch your co-mates (and brothers in a somewhat earthly exile) walk the walk of our moon’s surface. What a lot of work the moon has done for me since.
I understand that you took a photo, on that day, of Earth and all the humans alive, including your co-mates: Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin and all past and future matter in some form as matter can neither be created or destroyed.
Michael, I was brand newly fifteen years old and either sitting in front of our old Rediffusion TV set at 106, Addiscombe Road or on my way to school in Croydon on top of a 119 bus. Who knows?
What I do know is that, as the only past, present or future living matter not caught on that photo, and a being who circumnavigated the moon on your own without any radio contact, if I was lost and had to find my way home, I would ask you. And Mister Justin Case of course.
And that Matter that cannot be either created or destroyed …
From Janet (nee)Titterington.
Dear Michael Collins …
20/07/2019 // by Jan Moran Neil
I thought Michael Collins was the IRA leader in 1916 who was shot by the British after the Easter Uprising in Dublin. Strange how you can get things completely wrong eh? So, he was the bloke who stayed behind in the Orbiter while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin went about their shenanigans down on the moon.
I was in the Aussie bush at the time, in 150 mile camp in the middle of nowhere. Since I was maintenance, it fell to me to build an aeriel for the event so I put two sticks together in a cross formation and nailed wire to each side going around three times. Because of the intense sun, it was generally impossible to get any radio reception during the day and all we got from this “aerial” was alot of crackling and, “one small step…crackle, crackle” while three of us huddled in the shade of an aluminium hut. It was all my fault, of course, that we missed the greatest event in human history.
Strange to think that everybody can remember where they were at the time…bus in Croydon, kicking dust in the tropical Top Half etc etc. Don’t know if the world was really united but we all watched/heard the same thing at the same time… .