Red moon and my first eclipse...

So just why is it whenever a celestial experience takes place it’s always bloody cloudy?

It doesn’t matter where I am, as soon as the moon or sun is about to eclipse or a meteoroid shower is about to fall the clouds gather and suddenly all chance of spectacle is obliterated.

Bloody, bloody, bloody UK weather. Bloody, bloody, bloody moon. Bloody, bloody, bloody everything. Even the moon doesn’t trust me enough to put in a bloody appearance (literally).

Of course the rest of the world saw it just fine. Just look at these fantastic shots taken by my facebook pals Andrew Casson in Gran Canaria (above) and part of a set taken by Liam Reeve in Adelaide (below) – what stunning pictures, a big thanks for letting me borrow them.

Yes, bloody UK weather.

Back on July 20^th, 1963 I remember standing in the school playground clutching a piece of glass that I’d held over a candle for seemingly hours, allowing the soot to build on its surface until my fingers burnt. The whole school, class by class, neatly lined-up in the playground waiting for the solar eclipse.

We’d been building up to it for weeks. Learning all about what total eclipses were, how an eclipse of the moon can only happen on a new moon when the moon passes in front of the surface of the sun, how we shouldn’t look directly at the sun even in an eclipse or our eyes would be burnt to cinders and how in earlier times people had been afraid that the sun would never return after the eclipse that they killed goats and virgins afterwards as a symbol of thanksgiving to the gods. Well, it was 1963.

There we stood, a group of young umbraphiles, waiting for the sun to shine no more. Only ten minutes to go. The girls were giggling, us boys pushing and shoving – all waiting for the whistle that was to be blown signalling the start of the eclipse.

And then the clouds came.

They seemed to blow in from nowhere, but soon the sun, which had been fully visible just a few moments before, became a hazy ball hanging in an overcast sky. The whistle blew loud and shrill and long, the pea revolving like a tiny moon caught inside the silver tin of the whistle.

We waited, watching the sky intently, candle soot glass held to our childish eyes. Oh, I saw something or at least I imagined I did, a shadow maybe passing over the blur in the sky, the slow darkening of the playground around us; but nothing like we’d been promised, not the magnificent flaming corona that Mr Ennis (keeper of the moon whistle) had spoken about so vividly and with such enthusiasm.

And then it was over and clutching our glasses in soot blackened fingers, we trudged back into class to rote our eight times table.

Last night’s eclipse started just before nine and was over just after ten. As usual I didn’t see a thing. The red tinged Moon that appears as she travels through the long cone-shaped shadow that the Earth casts in space didn’t show for me.

Probably just as well. I feel angry enough with things without a red moon adding to my fury.

Oh well, there’s another lunar eclipse in October. Perhaps we’ll get clearer skies next time.