I don’t normally get up early on Fridays because I don’t have a school run and I stay at work until late on Thursday nights, but of course this morning was different, and I staggered out of bed and took the dog for a long walk, much to his delight, to see the eclipse. I mean for me to see the eclipse, because obviously he wasn’t interested, but he does like charging about sniffing things, so there was something in it for both of us, and we went to spend an hour milling round the park and staring at the cloudy sky hopefully. I didn’t expect to see very much, really, but it doesn’t happen every morning and so I thought I would like to be around for it, and see whatever there was to be seen anyway.
I was halfway round the park when the clouds suddenly parted, and I was treated to the most astounding and exciting view of a half-sun. I was so thrilled that I shouted: “Look! Look!” and some other people walking their dogs turned and stared (at me, not the vanishing sun) as if I had completely lost my marbles.
I had forgotten all about the bit where you are supposed to wear safety glasses, or not look at it through glass because it’s bad luck, or some similar health and safety fable, but it didn’t appear to matter very much, my eyes still seem to be working all right, and I looked at it for ages. It appeared and disappeared behind the clouds on and off for the next twenty minutes: it was amazing, seeing our world plunged into gloom as a giant rock slid between us and our source of life. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought it would be cold: but somehow I hadn’t: and I thought the middle few minutes, around half past nine, were truly frightening: chilled and murky and awful. A dog howled somewhere, in a pleasingly apocalyptic sort of way, and I decided I didn’t like it at all and went home, where the stove was going nicely and I could feel myself safe from any impending cosmic cataclysm.
On the way back the builders up the road were staring at it and they shouted to me. “Look! Look!” and I looked again and saw the sun coming back, and felt happy that I wasn’t a terrified medieval peasant and also that I wasn’t the only person shouting excitedly at everybody else that something astonishing was happening, and felt a warm feeling about the builders. They are nice builders anyway and give me their scrap timber for the stove, so we had a small kinship for a few minutes whilst we watched the sun coming back together. They didn’t have any glasses either, so we will probably all be blind tomorrow, like in The Day of The Triffids.
It has been a very satisfactory day, in fact. Oliver called last night to tell me that he had been trying really hard, and has been awarded not one, but two Sent Up For Goods. I have no idea what this is, all I know is that it is enough to make a small boy incoherent with pride and he hasn’t had one before. I was absolutely delighted, anyway, because it seems to be a splendid accolade, whatever it is, certainly he thinks so.
What is more, he has made a new friend and has started sharing his Beano comics with the rest of the dorm. I felt very pleased and relieved that my words of wisdom had been heeded, so much so that I don’t even mind paying out the substantial bribe I had thought it prudent to offer, in order to maximise the chances of this outcome. I have not mentioned this to Mark.
So between the amazing power of the Universe reminding us all of what a lovely warm safe place the world is when the sun is shining on it, and smugness about my effective parenting abilities I have had a very pleasing day. Mark is coming home tomorrow so I have hauled the sheets off the bed, they needed boiling on account of the dog and I won’t have time tomorrow. Tomorrow is when Lucy finishes school. I am off to York to collect her, which is really exciting. By Wednesday Oliver will be finished as well, and everybody will be here together.
I will have to put a towel on the bed for the dog tonight, Mark gets grumpy when he finds his side of the bed covered in yellow grease and dog hair, and I don’t want to spoil a happy reunion moment, especially when he notices I have knocked his bedside lamp over and broken it again, it is hardly any time since he last mended it and put it in a safer place where he mistakenly thought it would be out of the way of my clumsiness.
I am looking forward to seeing them all so much. They are noisy, and messy, and eat everything, but it will be lovely to have them all at home. I can’t wait.
