Moments and eclipses

3 March 2007

Finding inspiration for painting is never hard, or far away. Rather bleary eyed (I’d had a late night) stumbling up the lane this morning with Rufus, twelve Magpies peeled out of the hedge as I approached. As it was a bit misty, it gave a great tonal aspect to the scene and a photo I took many years ago came to mind of a snow-clad terraced hillside in Wharfedale, which suddenly fulfilled it’s purpose as the ideal background to the scene.

Looking forward to tomorrow’s Lunar eclipse – it’s meant to be a good one – I remember the Solar eclipse when I was working at Raby Castle (11 August 1999) all the birds stopped singing and the deer in the park just seemed to stand still looking aimless. I can’t resist quoting a bit from my friend Neil’s “Exciting and accurate eclipse diary” (sorry Neil) that he he emailed the night before, with similar predictions over the weather:

Enjoy trip to Land’s End, and coastal walk therefrom, in conditions of (amazingly) astonishing beauty. At 11.11, precisely twenty-fours hours before E-hour, the sun is shining for all its cotton-picking worth, the better to get my hopes up. It shines for the whole of the rest of the day. It is shining now, as I write. (6.51p.m.) But every single weather forecaster on UK TV and radio is predicting utter, total humiliation for astro-geeks like me who have risked all by making their way west. “Cloud,” they say, and “cloud” again in their stinking, communist fashion, before making their way back home to their wretched families in their wretched two-up, two-downs and their rotten, wretched goldfish, and their rotten, wretched…arrghh…arrrghhhh….. I must finish. Pray for me. Off down to the bar now. “Hi girls – may be able to get you up on a chopper – Producer’s like putty in my hands…”

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