A lot of intelligence work is carried out by unsung heroes who quietly collate, analyse and disseminate, working in organisations such as the MOD’s Defence Intelligence Staff. During much of the last century the UK’s airspace was routinely intruded upon by Russian aircraft (no doubt we did the same to Russia). So it made a great deal of sense to log UFO reports and contextualise them in order to ascertain if the objects sighted were of defence significance. No matter how barmy. Or not entirely barmy: Many people spotting stealth planes, prior to them being made public (which sometimes takes years, and the prototypes may never be declassified), would, given the cultural collateral of ‘unidentified’ flying objects, view them as little green (or grey) men operating some kind of intergalactic free prostate checking clinic. Likewise a Harrier Jump Jet showing off, at night, viewed from 5km away. Or a missile test. Or atmospheric research that also provides handy surveillance platforms. Taxes at work.

So having a civil servant take reports between more important tasks makes sense. If a pattern emerges of some potentially unknown novel foreign aircraft regularly violating national airspace it is a major concern. The files were not secret, it’s more likely the reason some of the documents weren’t released sooner was a combination of laziness and stinginess. There are interesting bits buried in there, but if I can spot them, despite having the invisible Jolly Green Giant knee me in the back, I’ll be fucked if I’ll point them out. Do not ask me to point them out. I won’t point them out to anyone on principle.

FYI I think alien life exists and possibly super advanced aliens also (I was going to say super intelligent but then it dawned on me that intelligence is a very human concept). It’s just that the distances involved are huge and beings clever enough to travel faster than light (if it’s even possible), or some kind of time-travel (if it’s even possible), will likely have cleverer ways of studying intergalactic flora and fauna. In the event of time travel the computing possibilities are endless.

Although the porcine pursuit may have been motivated by curiosity rather than anger.  What kind of idiot hangs around to find out?   I was over the fence faster than George Blake. That night, lying on an insulating mat, on a slab of stone, in a very flat field, in Norfolk, I looked up at the sky and thought “there’s more black stuff than stars.  It must be better”.  And fell asleep for a bit, only to be woken a short time later by a coach load of UFO hunters from Birmingham, who I amused with drunken tales of being abducted by UFOs, which they bought wholesale, until I brought UB40 and the Second World War into it. Talking colons while lecturing about the bombing of Coventry was over egging the story.