Steven Spielberg reckons aliens may already be living among us. And I have to say, the more I look around, the more I think the man may be onto something.
At first, I dismissed it. You hear these theories all the time. Aliens in secret government bunkers. Aliens sending signals through satellites. Aliens landing in cornfields in America, where there is always a farmer available to be interviewed by a local news crew.
But then I looked around Donegal and started to notice the signs.
For a start, there are politicians. Surely no ordinary human being would willingly choose a career where half the country shouts at you, the other half doesn’t believe you, and your main job appears to be promising things that will happen shortly after the next ice age. Perhaps politicians are not power-hungry at all. Perhaps they are simply alien observers, sent here to study human disappointment.
Then there are football referees. Now, I’m not saying all referees are extraterrestrials, but it would explain a lot. It would explain how they can stand three yards from a tackle, look directly at it, and see something completely different from every other living creature in the ground. Maybe their eyesight works on a different spectrum. Maybe they can see fouls from previous centuries. Maybe they are still learning the rules of Earth sport and doing their best under difficult intergalactic circumstances.
But the strongest evidence is camper vans. People with perfectly good homes, central heating, proper toilets, wardrobes and enough room to fall out with each other in comfort, decide instead to spend their holidays in a converted van the size of a garden shed. They park beside a windy cliff, boil water on a tiny stove, sleep inches from the steering wheel, and call it freedom. Freedom? That is not freedom. That is a test conducted by a superior civilisation. Perhaps the camper van reminds them of the mothership they arrived in. Small windows. Limited storage. Strange noises at night. A toilet arrangement that must never be discussed in polite company. It all makes sense now.
Then there are the cyclists. Tourists come to Donegal on cycling holidays, which is suspicious enough in itself. You see them on black bicycles, dressed head to toe in waterproofs, carrying enough baggage to suggest they are fleeing a war or opening a branch of Argos in Killybegs. Bags hanging off the front. Bags hanging off the back. Bags on the handlebars. Bags behind the saddle. If they tried to board a Ryanair flight with that lot, they’d need a second mortgage and a solicitor. And still they smile. That is the unsettling part. They cycle uphill, into horizontal rain, with a lorry behind them and a sheep staring at them from a ditch, and they look happy. No normal human being is that content while being sandblasted by Donegal weather. One of these days, one of them will reach the top of Barnesmore Gap, press a hidden button on the crossbar, and shoot into the sky like ET going home.
Of course, the real genius of aliens living among us is that they would hide in plain sight. They wouldn’t arrive in silver suits saying, “Take me to your leader.” They would know better. They would join a tidy towns committee, buy a camper van, complain about the price of diesel, and ask where does the best chowder. Who knows who they are.
I have begun to wonder about myself. I still buy lottery tickets even though I have more chance of being abducted by a flying saucer, elected Pope, and asked to referee an All-Ireland final on the same weekend. Every week, I hand over the money with a little surge of optimism, as if the universe might finally look down and say, “Go on, give him a break.” Perhaps that is the proof. Perhaps I am one of them and don’t know it. Perhaps because winning the jackpot is the only way I can afford to get Elon Musk to fly me home.
Elon Musk. Now there’s a thought.
