rapping with the colonel about ufo's

My cousin Howard is the Irish army's senior weapons expert.
I phoned him tonight.
"Hey there Colonel, can you come over for twenty minutes? I want you to look at our video of the UFO's."
"James I can't. I'm in the middle of something that has to be finished by tomorrow."
I allowed a gentle sigh.
"Do you remember how you used to bully me in childhood?," sez I conversationally. "Do you remember that time where you were pushing me around in front of Helen and Patricia? It was very humiliating. I often wonder if I'd become a murderer or a rapist would you have been partially responsible."
There was a groan from the other end of the phone.
"I'll be over in five minutes."
Ah, the advantages of a lousy childhood.
Don't judge me too harshly bold readers. Everyone uses what they've got.
The cousin was as good as his word, arriving at the old chateau within minutes.
I put on our DVD footage of the lights.
He watched intently.
"I think they're parachute flares," he said. "You see they seem to fade out after thirty seconds. That would be the fuse burning down."
I asked why they were static in the sky.
"They look static because you're twenty miles away," he said.
I pointed to the light that had moved.
"Well it didn't move much," he said. "But I've seen things like that. The one that moved might have had a faulty parachute and fallen more quickly."
I asked would he not expect them to fall to earth.
"Yes," he said. "Whoever's firing them is firing them high. That is unusual. Winds from the mountains might be keeping them up. Normally we time them so they burn out as they drop towards the ground. We are aiming to have them extinguish just as they reach the ground. But they probably aren't as high as they seem. Remember you are looking up towards the mountains. The firing is probably coming from off the mountain side."
I reminded him that the upstairs window of our house is at a higher elevation than the mountains and that we were in fact looking down on the mountains.
"I don't think you were," he said. "I think you'll find the house is actually lower down."
I asked would it change his opinion of the lights if we turn out to have been higher up.
He said: "No. What I am seeing there is parachute flares."
I asked him about the patterns of triangles and straight lines.
"I'm not surprised by that," he said. "We would lay down a diamond formation in the sky. This is in keeping with what I would expect to see."
I showed him our photo from the second incident, the July sighting.
The photo shows a red light.
"Now that's funny," said Howard. "Our flares are all white. Okay sometimes behind cloud they can appear red for a moment. You might see them showing red before they break cloud cover. That's possible. This picture is harder to explain than the film. But you've no other footage with it. I'd have to see it myself in person to assess it properly."
I asked him was he absolutely sure the film showed flares.
"I've seen nothing that I think cannot be explained," he said. "To me those are artillery or mortar flares."
He left.
There was only one picture I didn't show him.
As you all know, some of us got a bit excited after the first UFO incident. We started seeing mysteries everywhere. You might remember me telling you about framed photos tumbling off pianos, broad luminosities in the sky, etc etc.
And one other thing.
A light emanating from a black triangle, precisely the sort of thing beloved of UFO enthusiasts around the world.
We saw it and photographed it on August 24th at 6am.
Over Howard's house.