IT HAPPENED TO ME…
Mystery over London
As far as my memory allows, the following aerial sighting happened in the summer of 1983 or 1984, when I was working as a car mechanic for a garage in Perivale, Greenford, west London. We had a customer planning to take his car abroad. Two days before his departure, his car randomly wouldn’t start. We fixed that, but then it failed to start again, diagnosed as a bad battery. Although I was not involved in the initial repair, we arranged for me to come in extra early, 6am. I would drive to his home in St Catherine’s Dock and replace the battery in time for him to catch the ferry.
I started off from my home in High Wycombe about 5.30am. It was a beautiful morning with a crystal clear blue sky. I took the M40 to Uxbridge where it became the A40, known as the Western Avenue. I could see a band of cloud/smog over London, back-lit by the rising Sun turning it a brilliant orange red. There was no other cloud about. As I drove nearer I noticed a hot air balloon to the left, roughly to the north-east and at an elevation of
