A false lead

On reading (again in a free newspaper, on the 24th February 2008) that the following morning, artist Stuart Semple was going to release smiley-faced pink clouds over the capital from outside Tate Modern on London’s South Bank, I wondered (not necessarily in this order):

Could this be the cause of the pink glow?
- I had seen the pink glow for myself from this very location in November -
Was the pink glow a remnant of a trial run for the artist?
How could one control the appearance of a cloud?
Was this the end of my investigation in to the pink glow?

With some trepidation I arrived on the South Bank at 9am on Wednesday 25th February 2009 to witness the event. I was at first disappointed and then relieved to find I had followed a false lead made of helium, soap and vegetable dye.



Stuart Semple's Happy Cloud

I spent an hour watching the somewhat melancholy smileys drifting over the Thames, feeling a sense of community spirit as I held my mobile phone wistfully up to the sky in unison with my fellow cloudspotters.

I asked myself, had I really been expecting to see a spectacle akin to the aurora borealis emerge smiling from a cloud making machine?