Where we live, the sky turns a beautiful pink-golden hue in autumn. I often take long walks by myself, walking up the hill across the fields to watch the moon rise from the valley below. Often, it makes me wonder about the nature of the universe and how I am a part of it, and yet how separate and foreign I feel from it.

I’ve just been on a similar walk. I took the long route through the forest and I am quite exhausted by the time I return. I sit on the kitchen table, admiring the pink sky against my green lawn and the thuja trees lining our garden. I make a cup of tea and sit at the table, pick up my phone and unlock it with a swipe.

My fingers habitually reach out for Instagram — I swipe disinterestedly through some reels and stop at one showing a clean-shaven guy with no hair and no eyebrows talking about aliens living among us. I have no idea why my feed has thrown this at me. My usual fodder is limited to skin care with some women’s empowerment thrown or reels where influencers speak about the latest books and offer 20-second analyses for the intellectually disposed. A reel about aliens is not my kind of algorithm. Well, almost not. I’ve been quite interested in books and teachings about creating your own life and visualising yourself as part of the universe and all that and have also come across a spirit teacher called Bashar, who speaks about energy hotspots and alien landings. The only reason I even know about him is that I was driving back from work when my playlist suddenly jumped to this very strange and other-worldly audio clip featuring Bashar answering questions on how creatures from other worlds have always known how to create their own lives and how some of them live among us and have visited us in 2025.

I haven’t seen any aliens, but I don’t have a frame of reference and they probably look nothing like the antennae-bearing creatures we humans have visualised them to be.

Sometimes I think my son is an alien. We have a difficult time understanding each other.

And then there’s my cat. She’s definitely an alien — judging by the way she stares at me — or at least a spirit from the infinite. I simply think about her, and she appears.