the long run

The Partial Solar Eclipse 2015: a newt’s eye view. by Nigel Smith I must admit, the media mega-hype leading up to the event did not put me in a particularly receptive frame of mind. The Breakfast Show on BBC1 was particularly inane. They seemed to think we all had a mental age of two-and-a-half:  ‘Be sure to wear these safety glasses and never look at the sun without protection. Remember, dark glasses aren’t enough.’  That’s fine every hour or so, when new viewers turn on, but not, please, every five minutes… And then the explanations were ludicrous. At one point I even heard a presenter explaining that the moon was smaller than the sun. REALLY? Are you certain? Surely, my photos clearly showed it to be the other way around. Otherwise, why would the moon over-shadow the sun….? Grrrrr…. Time to tear your hair out in handfuls. And then there was that idiotic footage from Salisbury Plain, or the Western Isles, with Stonehenge or the Callanish stone circle in the background. I couldn’t believe the inconsequential rubbish the various spokespeople spouted. Did they honestly think that Neolithic communities erected those stunning monuments because ‘eclipses were important to them?’ Christ, if I wasn’t an atheist, I’d call down Hell’s fires to consume these so-called ‘experts’ and subject them to everlasting torment. But I digress. [Takes deep breath. Thinks calming-thoughts-verging-on-Mindfulness. Then resumes:] So I was in no mood to get exercised about a mere eclipse. At nine o’clock I headed out to the barn to check the sheep and let the chickens out. But as soon as I stepped out of the back door I was aware that the light was different. Normally our mornings are noisy affairs with birdsong everywhere. But not then. I barely heard so much as a tweet. It was eerily silent. And the light was subdued too, with a very slight reddish tinge. No, it could not be denied, everything somehow seemed very special. I fed and let the chickens out of their fox-proof hutch; then I went in and collected various cameras. I also shouted to Maisie, who was up-stairs catching-up with her emails, and together we headed down to the pond. Over twenty years ago she had seen a solar eclipse beautifully reflected in the waters of the Flag Fen Mere, so we decided to repeat the experiment and use our pond as a mirror this time, too. As we walked down to the pond we could see there was a thin covering of cloud which was thick enough to allow me to take a few few shots directly, with my ISO set around 1250 and the thickest filter I could find. They were OK, but not brilliant. Then the clouds started to clear and we turned our attention to the pond. The trouble was that the warmth of the sun made the newts frisky and soon it became impossible to see anything. But as the eclipse progressed, the temperature around us dropped and it grew darker. The newts were fooled into thinking it was night – and time for bed. Suddenly the activity stopped and the waters became icily calm. And then I got this view. It may not be National Geographic and there’s no Corona, but it was worth the wait. And I’ll never, ever forget it.