My career as an amateur astronomer is blighted by street lighting and the English weather. In fact you could say that I suffer from…
I've seen Galaxies, Milky Ways and Mars in sweet shops – they're chocolate bars. But I've never seen them in the night sky either with telescope or naked eye. 
I must be a poor astronomer to be missing such phenomena. Halley's Comet, meteors, nebulae are celestial marvels I never see. The cloudy skies keep them out of sight, besides, I'm asleep at that time of night. 
I can't even muster a globular cluster. Astronomers like to play little games: constellations don't look like their names; Uranus is rude, 'yurrenus' will do; we can't have a planet doing a poo. 
Life on other planets is unlikely: the concept is totally alien to me. Despite all this I carry binoculars in case I discover some new stars. My friends find this all rather comical – the odds against it are astronomical. 
