Close encounters of the broken kind

I love public sculpture. I love it when it's quirky. I love it when it's beautiful. I just love it. Give me Angel of the North, Dream near St Helens, Singing Ringing Tree near Burnley, I'm really happy. After our very successful visit to the Temperance Bar on Saturday we decided to hunt down Halo near Haslingden. It's part of a series of sculptures called The Pantopticons round and about Lancashire. I had read about the flying saucer-like sculpture, called The Halo, on top of a hill which lights up at night and makes the skies above Rossendale blue.

In fact, I had looked out for the blue halo a number of times when we had been travelling along roads in the area and never ever seen anything resembling a violet ambiance above the local hills. Perhaps I'd just been looking in the wrong direction.

Off we explored and found a finger post saying The Halo. We parked and climbed up a hill (one of the older members of our merry troop was not happy about a walk...especially when we found a little parking space very near said sculpture). Halo is very impressive. It's very like an elevated outline of a UFO which may well take off at any moment. There are  views all round that light up the heart. If we'd only known that the views were the only thing that would light up we may have gone back home to 88 there and then. 

We are the adventurous type and decided to stick around in the area til dark. A very nice cafe was found and we dined out on sandwiches. Something as we say in Yorkshire 'to put us on'. Then we found our way back to our Halo in the dark, confident that we'd all soon be basking in an indigo hue radiating into the night sky. Good job we weren't relying on that little light cue. We drove right up to said sculpture and no glow was to be seen. A few blue bulbs were lit but clearly most were dead. There were no concentric rings of blue loveliness to gasp at. There was no collective sucking in of breath as we wondered at this sight above the Lancashire mill towns. Oh dear... five very disappointed folks. We tucked into our cakes bought locally to cheer us up.

We conjectured that the launch of the sculpture must have been a wonder to behold  but that clearly no one had given any thought to maintenance. A shadow literally of its former self. Were we surprised that the local council had let it come to this? Alas we were not.

Perhaps one day the Council will notice and send a man up there to delve about. He will conclude that it's just too expensive to remedy and it will become yet another monument to the days of yore. A press release will be written and sent out to people who complain: " The Council regrets that the lights do not light up above Haslingden any more but we hope you will agee that when they did it was splendid. We think you will also agree that Rossendale never has had to rely on any Halo to 'light it up'."  Oh dear....perhaps next time we venture up there we can take lots of friends. We'll all take torches and point them skywards at dusk and shine our own little light up over the hills. A halo illuminating the sky once again.