Walking Through the Eclipse

Yesterday's daily walk ended up coinciding with the much vaunted eclipse.  I certainly didn't plan it that way - the timing was the result of a series of setbacks and incidents.  My setting out for the walk ended up being delayed for various domestic reasons and when I finally got into the car to drive out to a local country park, I found the roads around Crapchester unusually congested.  Recalling that it was the day of this bloody eclipse, I suspected a connection, but assumed it was just people going home early to observe it.  Nevertheless, it took me forever to get out of the town, but the traffic was still abnormally heavy for the country roads I was on and I began to suspect that the bastards were all going the same way as me - which, it turned out, they were.  As I turned onto the very narrow lane which is the quickest route to my destination I found myself in inexplicable gridlock - the lane was just solid cars as far as you could see, none of them moving.  As I later learned, the Crapchester Astronomical Society had issued an open invitation for people to come and observe the eclipse at the primary school which is on that route.  Apparently failing to grasp that this town's population has an unusually high proportion of morons, it hadn't occurred to them that they would be overwhelmed and that when the car park was full, these morons wouldn't instead just drive on.  No, instead they blocked the entrance and treated the road as a car park, blocking it in both directions!

I eventually extricated myself from the gridlock and after much shouting at other drivers blocking my way, took the long route to my destination which, mercifully, proved to be pretty much deserted.  Anyway, as I couldn't be bothered to invest in any of those rip-off  'eclipse glasses', (I mean, what use are they when there isn't an eclipse and as the next one here in the UK isn't due for another sixty years I felt that my money could be better spent elsewhere), my view of the event was limited.  I mean, damn it, it wasn't even a full eclipse - I remember the last one which was a full eclipse.  At least it momentarily went dark during that one.  This time, of course, despite being a ninety five per cent eclipse, it never really got especially dark.  I observed with interest, however, the change in the quality of the light as the eclipse reached its peak and the way in which the birds and animals quietened down and ceased activity.  (On that previous, full, eclipse, I remember a cat looking alarmed and diving for cover as the sky darkened, then re-emerging when it was over and giving me an accusing look, as if I had been responsible for it all).  So yeah, I experienced the eclipse in my own way, but I still don't rate it as highly as the last one...