eagle flew out of the night

See Peter Gabriel's Solsbury Hill

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Waking up at 3 am, I find a song playing endlessly in my head. Not just the tune, but some of the words too. It's one of the most extraordinary popular songs, more potent than anything by Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen. Peter Gabriel has his own explanation for how it hatched in his mind and ears. See this site. But it has a special significance for me, as I shall relate.

 I first heard Solsbury Hill as quiet background music played continuously for more than an hour. My wife and I were in a sparsely populated theatre on Fulham Broadway, one Saturday in December 1978. We had brought our eight-year-old daughter to the dress rehearsal of a dance-drama by a troupe called the Mudhoppers. She'd been invited as an ex-pupil of our local ballet class

I guess dress rehearsals seldom go smoothly. It was supposed to start at 3pm 3pm on Saturday afternoon. Parents were getting impatient. The show was nice, we were proud enough of our Rosie. She may have been dressed as a pixie, with pointy crepe paper ears.

Bu Solsbury Hill stuck in my head, and a strange myth developed in my head, based on an actual encounter in Hampstead Heath.

We'd driven up to this pond so the children could paddle and float their little boats.