Don't look at the Sun - you could die! - How not to watch a Solar Eclipse

I went to look at a solar eclipse today.  Although strictly speaking you're not allowed to look at a solar eclipse because you can go blind.  Anyway, because there was one today and I'm not blind, I must not have really looked at it.

I decided to go to Garforth not to look at it.  Not looking at solar eclipses is pretty memorable (I can still remember where I was when I didn't look at the last one in 1999, ie on a river bank on Teesside).  Because I don't like it much where I live, I decided I didn't want to have to remember it here, but I'm okay with Garforth, so I went there.

Is this Heaven?  - No, it's Craighouse on the Isle of Jura

I wasn't sure exactly when the eclipse was but I thought it would happen around 9.20 am so I walked around randomly either side of that time, trying to keep the sun side on, so that at worst, if I did look at it, I might only lose the sight in one eye.

I'd heard that it was going to be a 90% eclipse, so I was expecting it to go 90% dark, but I hadn't factored in the fact that the other 10% of the sun is still really bright, so it only went a bit dark.

I'm just going behind the Moon for a bit, I won't be long

I saw some schoolchildren and they were all huddled round with their backs to the sun, and they were trying to capture some light from it through pinholes onto pieces of paper.  The kids were all really excited but the teachers seemed more nervous than anything.  They were probably all looking forward to it being over in case they got sued by the parents of some child who'd burned his own eyes out.  

When the sky was at its darkest, I was in a graveyard.  I didn't plan to go there, it was just where my sideways walking led me.  The graveyard is next to Glebelands playing fields where I used to play football when I was a child.  One particular corner of the field, where I used to play regularly, is now full of graves.  I guess the churchyard got full, so they had to expand.  It's a sobering thought, to realise not just how much time has passed since I used to play there, but how many people have died since then, and how many of them are now under my old football pitch.  

I wasn't trying to do it in a voyeuristic way, but I couldn't help look at some of the names on the graves, to see if I recognised anyone.  I didn't find anyone I definitely knew, although I think a dinnerlady from my junior school might have been there, but a lot of the surnames were familiar.  These could have been the mums and dad or the brothers and sisters of people I knew but I wasn't sure.  

I've been getting ready to move house again this week.  I usually like to move around every 11 months.  It keeps me on my toes.  Because I don't want to have to move stuff that I don't use or need, I've been sorting through all my drawers and cupboards this week.  Including looking in some which boxes I don't normally look in, except for on weeks when I'm moving house.  Amongst other things I've been sorting through old photos and papers, including going through the remainder of things I acquired from my mum, when she died last year.  

It can be a jarring process looking through documents and photos which span my entire lifetime, but a real highlight of the week was having another look through my mum's holiday photos.  Many of them were taken on package holidays in the sun that she went on over the years.  If there was a competition for the worst photos ever taken, these would surely win.  They all seem to have been taken in the dark, with thumbs over the lenses, mostly of drunk people with no heads who are very, very far away and who are looking at the camera in the style of a surprised cavemen who is astounded at the novelty of the experience.  Sometimes there is just a dot of a head at the front and the rest is just ocean.  Sometimes there is only ocean.  Even the pictures of my brother's graduation that she took appeared to have been taken in a tunnel at night.  In terms of sheer badness, they are unsurpassed.

In amongst them though I did find a team photo from of a British Army football team which was taken in Seoul in Korea in 1954.  The names of the 11 players are written on the back of the photo, and they all have typical fifties army nicknames like Taffy, Smudge, Spider, Grasshopper and Ginger.  I had to look a few times but I'm pretty sure the one called Ginger is my dad.  I didn't even know till yesterday that my dad ever played football, although I knew he'd been to Korea.  I think he made mashed potato during the Korean War.  I was told recently at a family reunion that I look like him but less Ginger, so I guess I should be glad that didn't make it through the genetic selection process.  

As well as the photos, I also came across my collection of death certificates this week.  So far I've got  ones belonging to a wife, a mum and dad and two grandparents.  If I get any more I'm going to need a bigger envelope.  My two other grandparents had the good manners to die before I was even born, so thankfully that was someone else's admin burden.   

Another person who may or may not be dead is my former alcoholic step dad Terry.  When he was around the age I am now, and shortly after his own brother and dad had died, he said to me that he wasn't afraid of dying, because he knew lots of people that were already on the other side.  I used to think that he wanted to die too, but he didn't have the nerve to commit suicide in one go, so he was just trying to do it in instalments by drinking and smoking himself to death.  

Although I could already relate to what he was saying, because my dad and grandparents were already dead by then, I've got a lot more idea now, because lots of other people I know have died too.  As well as Beverley and my mum, there's Joy who I used to work with at the bank, who was so supportive when Beverley was ill, and who then ended up getting the same thing.  There's Matthew who I used to play rugby with and who I shared a room with in Italy, but who had a faulty heart.  There's also Bob who drove the backup truck to many of my crazy cycling expeditions.... And lots of others, both old and young.

So what has all this got to do with the eclipse?  I don't know, except walking around in a graveyard not looking at the sun during an eclipse is as good a time as any to start idly wondering about the meaning of life.

This is my room at the Jura Hotel

And one of the thoughts I wondered was this:  I wondered if the people we've lost are like the sun during an eclipse.  They're not really gone, they're just hiding round the back of the Moon for a bit.  Like I was when I was behind the Paps of Jura on holiday.  Unfindable by any mobile phone signal in the technological desert of the Jura Hotel, I was still existing but just out of range for a while.

And if so, like the Sun come back from its temporary excursion, will I see them again?  I hope so.  

I'm not too sure what the afterlife will be like, but if, at the end of the big while tunnel that some people get halfway down and then come back, there's a much bigger version of the Jura Hotel where all my dead friends and relatives are staying, I think that would be pretty good.  

I guess I'll find out when I get there....



Postscript - A few months after writing this, I found out that my step dad Terry is also dead. He died in 1999 aged 54.  Eventually he did manage to smoke and drink himself to death.  I wish I'd been a bit more understanding towards him when he was the age I am now.  I didn't agree with the way he handled things, but I could at least have been a bit more sympathetic.  He used to say that I was arrogant when I was 18.  He was probably right.  It's easy when you're 18 to think that you've got all the answers, but in fairness you haven't had to test those answers out against adult life yet.