Space ships roam the Welsh Hills.

In an effort to avoid doing any work this morning, I tripped over a Sky News article from a while back. In it, they reported on an interview with a Dr Mitchell, who was on Apollo 14 in 1971, and holds the world record for the longest space walk (over 9 hours apparently). He has said that he was aware of many UFO visits to Earth during his career with Nasa but each one was covered up (surprise surprise). He went on to claim that the space agency made contact with aliens, describing the beings as "little people who look strange to us". All this made me think many odd and interesting things far off my normal charted course of thoughts to be thunk. Are you ready? Here goes....

1: Why is it my automatic instinct to think that poor Dr Mitchell is perhaps not completely all there? That perhaps a part of him stayed on the moon at the end of his mini marathon? The second anybody says they saw a UFO, were abducted by aliens, watched ET stamp out a crop circle, the rational side of me says 'Tsk, too many absinthes at the pub young man / lady'. I never say 'Really? what registration was their craft? did they communicate with bananas? Have they seen Elvis?'. All this despite the fact that I can see that statistcally, it is highly unlikely that we are alone out here. This isn't just me either, I think it is a standard response by most of the world, otherwise we would all be in our backyards with homemade telescopes and tinfoil hats every night.

2: Why are aliens always supposed to look vaguely like people? Why can't they look more like an Octopus that had a one night stand with a cactus? Or a flea with a neck like a giraffe, or a school of fish that smell like ginger?

3: Why do alien visitations always seem to take place at night, in the middle of nowhere. Why aren't they tripping down Park Lane, dropping in at the Louvre and partying in Times Square?

4: If there is a superior race out there in the heavens, a race that has conquered the art of space travel, why of why would they only contact NASA? Wouldn't they also want a front cover of Hello Magazine? A chat show of their own? With their technological abilities it should be easy to spread the word that they are here - or is that what Men in Black was? A promotional film from the UFO tourist board?

5: Oddly, there have been two 'sightings' near me. 20 years apart, they were witnessed by the majority of the local population (so, about 10 people then), of all ages, classes and creeds. They all agreed on what they had seen and have never varied their stories. Yet still, I persist in suspecting that the water had LSD in it, again rather than being convinced that spaceships roam the welsh hills.

6: Do we actually want to know if there is anybody out there? If you accept the conspiracy theorists cry that the US government has evidence of alien life forms (never the Belgian Government I notice - is Belgium as unpopular wtih aliens as it is with humans?). Sorry, back to the point; if you accept as true that the governments know something we don't, is it something that we want to know? Are they doing us a favour by not telling us that aliens came to dinner?

How will it help me to decide what I want for supper, or whether to wear sparkly shoes or sensible shoes, if I know ET is watching me? What can I do about it? Not very much to be honest. And that's the point. Telling us little green men are real serves no helpful purpose.

In fact, the argument is that news that 'we are not alone' would apparently engender nothing but mass panic, an abandoning of morality and a short term view of life that would mean people stop going to work, stop paying their bills and cause general chaos. Not unlike a global economic crisis then. This would presumably be followed by a mass emigration to new and more exciting planets....

So my question for you is this; would you want to know that ET has been playing peeping Tom in your neighbourhood?