i'm not wrong i'm just crazy

“Off to Iran,” we comment, looking up - you can’t help but look up - but we don’t know that for sure, of course. It’s not on Flightradar, not on the news; probably a secret, except it’s our bloody sky and you can’t help but notice.

What are they doing? Friends say, with authority; they’re fighter jets and bombers, but I can’t say I know with authority. They leave and come back. Is there a bombing campaign we don’t know about? Do they flatten the sky over Iran, just to show off? There will be a flight path, country to country in a long linked line, whose stories will match up, where we could all work out what they’re doing; but who could follow that thread?

Do Americans know?

Everyone says they’re going to Iran - they certainly started flying distraction-low over us around then; they’re low-flying, impossible to hide. Are they? They certainly seem to thicken up - tearing apart the sky and frightening the children and setting all the dogs to bark - whenever America rattles a new sabre. But why? Of course there is not official information about why one must tolerate them. British people gather and complain and criticise, especially when they crash horribly through a Teams meeting or a conversation. They cannot quite talk about the planes like British people talk about weather; they’re fighter jets, and fearful, and still British people wonder; is it a secret? Is it bad to notice them? Is it polite?

Perhaps it will simply be useful for future historians to know, in 2026, in a corner of England, people looked up and wondered, and worried, and put their heads down again: not knowing what it meant, and not liking it all.

Today my friend shaded her eyes, the children around us - we have seven between us - going silent and pointing like dogs at the planes. They screamed overhead - the end of the world - with friends like these who needs anemones.

(Their shapes are bad, if you don’t know.)

My friend said, simply, with sincerity, “I hate them so much.”

I was so very glad that she had admitted to having noticed them that I bumped her, affectionately, shoulder to shoulder. What a good friend she is! Admitting to the planes!