Strange news from the East of the glittering constellation that is London: UFO sightings over a Tesco car park in Bromley-by-Bow.
Now London has an impressive record of such sightings, as we reported in Saturday Strangeness earlier on this year, and indeed there are many organisations dedicated to the study and recording of the phenomenon. For topological reasons, incidents seem especially in the flatlands to the East. Anyway, what caught our attention in the case of this story was the entry of brand placement into the alien fray.
Several thoughts occur to us. Could it be that the green grey ones are puzzled by a society the highest aspiration of which is to be able to maintain a lifestyle comprising a weekly sally to a crowded, heaving, homogenised store where we queue to part company with a significant percentage of our earnings? A society which conspicuously prizes its freedom and yet allows its shopping habits to be so tightly predetermined? You’ve got to admit that from the alien’s slimy, scaly perspective, this would seem pretty strange behaviour. In fact it may already be too late: they have probably come to the more or less correct conclusion that conquering the earth will be a doddle with the right marketing team and a new low fat chocolate flavoured super-food to dangle before us.
Or perhaps the super market chains are fed up with being accused of exploiting the Third World for cheap goods and are actually now outsourcing to other worlds. Shop and drop by teleport – there’s another possibility.
But sadly the truth is probably not quite as out there as we’d all secretly like it to be. It is most likely the case that there are always significant increases in newspaper articles about UFOs immediately pursuant to the release of major new sci-fi films. We all want to believe.
London UFOs from Punchup’s flickr stream under the Creative Commons Licence.
