A Manchester Eclipse
Time is measured in
epochs that put our ephemeral existence into insignificance. I have been in the
path of a few celestial events, solar eclipses that, without the explanation of
modern science, would have left us in total dread and foreboding.
Today in Manchester,
we witnessed a partial solar eclipse. Things did not really go dark, but
everyone was looking up to behold this once-in-a-lifetime heavenly sight.
I could not get hold
of eclipse glasses, so I improvised, making a pinhole camera. I probably needed
a bit more depth to the box, but it occupied me enough that I did not dare to
look directly at the sun.
An AI-generated infographic on the blog content. (Click to enlarge.)
As I live in an urban
city centre with many high-rise buildings, getting a good view first entailed
standing by the roadside, before I made my way to Mayfield Park, which we as
residents sometimes forget is so close and quite vast.
I watched it well
beyond the maximum before a lady offered me her glasses, and I then looked
directly at the majesty of our universe.
Twenty-Seven Years
Earlier
Twenty-seven years
and a day ago, we had another solar eclipse. This one was quite prominent; not
totality, but you saw and noticed the dimming of the light. As the light
dimmed, it took on a sepia hue, almost like being inside a photograph from the
1940s.
It was also a
different place. I was visiting a friend in the Netherlands, who lived out in
the countryside at Doorn, and what a spectacle we saw in his garden.
Doorn is also the
town in which the Kaiser of Germany spent his last days. Wilhelm II abdicated in
1918 and lived at Huis Doorn
until his death in 1941; fittingly, he seems to carry that same feeling of the
1940s that the sepia light evoked.
The House at Doorn
My friend's mother
took me on a tour of Huis Doorn. As her father had been the groundsman, their
house stood on the grounds, and she, with the other children, would run around
the house having tea with the Kaiser.
She showed me the
chutes they slithered through to get from one part of the house to another: a
historical monument, visited with a guide whose own history was formed within
its walls.
A Turning Point
I cannot tell why an
eclipse could be both momentous and auspicious. I did not see the future, for I
had just come out of a seven-year relationship. We remained friends and planned
a short holiday to Brussels.
As he returned to
England, I headed north to Holland. Nine months later marked the beginning of a
new life in the Netherlands, twelve and a half years of it. No, it was not to
enter a relationship, though I remained in contact with my friend in Doorn.
Written in the Skies
And God said,
"Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the
night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years,
and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the
earth." And it was so. [Genesis
1:14-15 NIVUK]
I do not do things by
chance. This might be a harbinger of things to come; the least you can do is to
be ready for when change and opportunity come.
Life is like a story
written in the skies, sometimes clear, at times cloudy, and even, on occasion,
in the dimness and haze of sepia. It comes as experience, to be written into
memory and history.
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