A 27 Year Eclipse

Germany in high summer – the heat seeping through and stealing all my energy. Church bells an endless cacophony as the early morning unfolds. In the bed next to mine Brian sleeps, oblivious to it all.

Twenty seven years have passed. It is summer again. Cornwall. A non-tourist town emptied out for the season. A few local children remain, fishing by the creek or jumping off the harbour walls into the river. Most seem to have gone away with their families.

The heat is not central Europe heat, but it is still oppressive in its own way. The grass has been bleached to the colour of straw. A tabby cat sleeps in the shade of a porch. It’s strange moving through these empty streets, surprise when you stumble across a passing car or a young woman hurrying to catch the next train.

Then, as now, an eclipse is coming. Twenty seven years apart. I am older. We are all older.

The trip to Germany began on a coach from Bristol to Heathrow. The steward on the coach reprimanding me for playing music too loudly via my cheap Walkman knock off – sounds leaking out from my headphones. I wonder what I was listening to back then? I wouldn’t be playing music on a coach now. I wouldn’t be on a coach.

We landed in Luxembourg and took a rented car across the border to Saarbrucken where we were booked to stay for a week. Europe was new to me then. Heidelberg was captivating. Trier steeped in history. Strasbourg a charming fusion of French and German culture. A tower to be climbed for the views, but not for me or my vertigo.

Now Europe has receded. We left the EU. Travel is less streamlined. For me the world has grown and shrunk at the same time. Inner space is where I spend my time now. But the summer heat powers me on. The sun feeds us all. Briefly, in a day or two, that source of energy will be dampened and obscured, much as many of my memories seem to be.

There were four of us on that trip. We drank beer from what claimed to be the oldest brewery in the world. It would be celebrating a thousand years of operation in another twenty years or more and of course we made a pledge to all reconvene on that date. All futures carry promise and certainty when you are young, but like the box of treasures buried in the back garden of my house as a child, there is a part of me that knew we would not be returning at a later date.

Europe is hotter now too. The bells doubtless still ring out to bring in the day and tired travellers mope through the streets, seeking relief in the air conditioned stores or the coolness of a passing tram.

On the day of the eclipse, the weather is mixed. There were no apps to consult for precise weather information, no satellite images to guide you seamlessly to where the clouds have passed. And that’s why we find ourselves driving randomly across the border into France in search of clearer weather and a place to view this unique event.

At a layby out in the country local police direct us towards a nearby field where a scattering of families and other parties have assembled. You can purchase glasses to safely view the eclipse. A parked up van sells snacks. The landscape is prosaic. The clouds barely part. In the distance is a patch of blue sky but it is too far away. It won’t make it here for the appointed hour and driving towards it at this point would be a fool’s errand.

So we stand among a huddle of strangers, experiencing the brief onrush of twilight and night and then a minute or two later it is dawn and the daylight returns. There is no quieting of birds deceived into sleep. There is nothing profound and at the same time that coming and going and returning of the light stirs something.

It’s fleeting though.  Two years earlier Halle-Bop hung in the sky like a benign omen, something wonderful that had travelled so far to shine over us. Walking home on a spring evening, alone, it felt obscurely as though the universe had sent someone to find me. Over the season the comet grew, it waned, eventually it passed from our view.

All things are wonders, brief or not. We are all part of a whole.

Now the sun remains. Bugs bite fiercely in the heat. Sometimes it is hard to sleep at night. The eclipse is coming again  Is the world fading away or is it me? And will the eclipse be the end point. It will turn dark, but perhaps this time the light won’t return. All the birds will fall silent, never to be heard again. 

These were the fears our ancestors faced.