(diaryland) August 31, 2003 - 1:30 p.m.

Last night, me and the people who tend to live in my house went to see Mars through a telescope.

We walked through a little forest near our house and came to a throng of people in a field underneath a super-cloudy night sky.

Every time Mars came out from the clouds, everyone would shout, "Yay!" They would also shout when Mars went away, which was usually five seconds later.

We decided to tough it out. We stuck ourselves to the end of a queue. There were many queues, all with their own telescope up the other end. Then some loud people added themselves to our queue. We stood there for more than an hour, in the middle of the night, in winter, with loud people behind us, with what looked like no chance of seeing Mars.

It really wasn't so bad.

Then, gradually, a huge clear patch of sky made its way over Mars. Everybody cheered. Our line moved along speedily, apart from the fact that the guy who owned the telescope kept having to move it a little bit all the time because Mars kept pissing off out of the viewfinder.

Then it was my turn to look through the telescope.

I saw Mars. It was kind of tiny, even through a telescope, but it did look like a planet. I could see the ice cap.

I suppose it was worth it.