Exercise 1

Emergency services were bombarded with phone calls from all over the north of England last night by people who reported seeing blue objects shoot across the sky. Mrs Linda Hayward was driving along the B456 road at the time.

'I usually come/ am usually coming along that bit of road at about ten. As I
went/ am going past the old barn, I saw a single bright blue light going across the road in front of my car. I stopped the car and watched/ was watching it for about fifteen minutes. It travelled/ was travelling quite slowly from east to west and then it suddenly disappeared. Until now I never believed/ have never believed in UFOs, although my son is forever trying to persuade me that they exist. But now I think that maybe he is/ was right.'

At the height of the panic, police stations got/ were getting around a thousand calls an hour from members of the public. Sergeant Ron Drake of the Ambledale police was particularly busy. 'Between 10 and 11 o'clock we received around thirty calls. The callers said they saw/ were seeing a single blue light about as big as a car over the village. We are now considering searching the fields around Ambledale for any evidence left behind.'

Dr Bart Mastow, a lecturer in astronomy at Trumpton University offers/ offered a simple explanation. 'The reports that came/ were coming in last night suggest/ suggested that it was a meteor shower. This is not unusual on a small scale, but last night's shower seems to have been very large. In fact, we are getting an increasing number of meteor showers, and my department is currently researching possible reasons for this.'

But many witnesses to the events believe that they observed/ were observing more than a meteor shower, and the Ministry of Defence says that they take/ are taking the reports of UFO sightings very seriously