Lunar eclipse
674 days ago
Managed to get some snaps with my rather inadequate digital camera:
Unfortunately, the camera couldn’t find the moon when in full eclipse (electronic viewfinder) or perhaps it was because the neighbours turned on their garden floodlight and rather spoiled things for me – although it did look cracking through the binoculars.
Not just because of the light last night, but because I’ve always been a fan of noctural ramblings and the night sky, I wholeheartedly support the CPRE’s Light Pollution Campaign. I do know of some villages that to this day do not have street lights and the difference is amazing, this mainly being the product of a rather feudal system, but it certainly has had a benefit here. I know a lot of lighting is to do with safety, but much so called security lighting is I believe, worthless.
Take the offices I know in the heart of the countryside that is automatically illuminated at night, activated by light sensors, which seems only to annoy the neighbours. The site is very private, so it would seem that the lighting would only serve to aid any burglar, rather than having motion sensors etc. that would at least alert anyone to intrusion. When the lights are on all the time, all people do is try to ignore them and draw their blinds against them, thereby missing anything untoward that may be going on.
Anyway, it would all seem a huge waste of energy and gives rise to yet another petition – not that I think he present incumbents will take a jot of notice.
Moments and eclipses
676 days ago
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…”