Low flying aircraft over Swanage Bay, thoughts of time slips

I was walking along the beach at Swanage, making for Ocean View - I fancied a cappuccino there - I relished the louche reputation the place had -

The November sunlight was warm - clouds were like enormous airships over Kings Barrow - the sea was calm - my boat shoes scuffed the fine yellow sand - I vaulted over the wooden groynes - longshore drift piled up the sand against each line of tarred, dripping, timber - I remembered the luckless narrator of Whistle and I'll come to you -

As I neared Ocean Bay, I became aware of the noise of an aircraft, a low droning note in the air - I  looked up - an aircraft was flying slowly towards the Isle of Wight - very low, only a few hundred feet it seemed, above the sea -

I could see its four propellers, its plump, dark grey, body, its broad wings - it banked, and returned, skimming over the top of Nine Barrows Down - it did this several times, flying low over the chalk ridge and then the sea -

I then saw two or three dark parachutes, drifting onto the ridge - the rear door at the back of the plane was half open - the plane at last flew slowly away, still very low in the sky -

I wondered what I'd seen - was it some form of a combined services exercise? - I loved the incongruity of it - parachutes falling down upon ancient barrows - was this, I thought suddenly, a time slip? - like the Philadelphia Experiment? - had some aircraft flown through a vortex?

Such thoughts heartened me, as I neared the Ocean Bay - I resolved, instanter,  to seek out a second hand bookshop, and to buy an armful of paperbacks about flying saucers and sacred geometries -

I could already see, in my mind's eye, the bookshop - hidden in a side street, its proprietor dozing amongst the stacks of volumes -