This one is maybe a bit autobiographical as I think somebody is trying to subconsciously influence me to write about numbers (perhaps) and I'm having none of it. So instead I'll write about shadows and eclipses and holidays.
When I was twelve I went to the South of France, to a villa esoterically addressed by my uncle as being in 'Campagne'. Since then I have realised that campagne means 'rural area' and that he was being flippant when he scribbled the directions down on paper. We wound on through the hills and the lanes and the fields until we ended up at this crumbly, dishevelled but glorious villa, an hour late, in the fading evening light. Somehow, the trees still glistened and the fields of sunflowers wobbled in the breeze as if there were a thousand tiny suns staying up late for our safe journey.
The villa cast this great shadow over the drive-way as we drove up, emphasising its rusty French beauty. Peeling paint, rusty hinges and missing pieces of stone made up the facade. It was inconsistent, and messy, and my first holiday home.
Our trip was a diversion, or should I say an extension, on a trip to Paris. A timely call from my uncle meant we finished up our Paris trip and hopped on a plane, tracing a trail down the curve of the Earth, to Bordeaux. From there, a train journey to Agen, and finally, a clueless tour of the countryside until we ended up near a place called Villeneuve-sur-Lot, named literally for being near the River Lot. Throughout all this our holiday was characterised by taxi-drivers happy to pretend they were lost to hapless English tourists (and mine and my sister's inability to decide whether gauche or droite was left or right made matters stickier).
So when we ended up in our villa, we were six hundred miles away from the total eclipse that was due to happen August 11, 1999. This meant that while my friends ventured down to Cornwall to peer at the weird, cold eclipse, me and my family stood around in swimming costumes on a scorching patio, trying to capture a glimpse of the sun with the help of a ping-pong bat. The crumbly villa walls were no use as they were full of shadows even in full sunlight.
Now, we do have some photos of the 'penumbra', the shadowy edge of a partial eclipse. They are not quite what we were hoping for. Mostly, my mum balancing on one leg, in swimming costume, extending a ping pong bat on which to reflect the sun and the moon, trying to avoid her own shadow ruining the image, and also trying to avoid melting her eyes in the process. No success was had with the ping pong bat but what we are left with is a brilliant example of my mother's willingness to do anything that might impress her truly geeky daughters. As it is, I much prefer this memory of a blindingly white table-tennis bat to anything else of that holiday. The whole week is characterised by sunflowers and sunshine - nothing even slightly shadowy about it remains. And that's my story of missing a partial eclipse.
When I was twelve I went to the South of France, to a villa esoterically addressed by my uncle as being in 'Campagne'. Since then I have realised that campagne means 'rural area' and that he was being flippant when he scribbled the directions down on paper. We wound on through the hills and the lanes and the fields until we ended up at this crumbly, dishevelled but glorious villa, an hour late, in the fading evening light. Somehow, the trees still glistened and the fields of sunflowers wobbled in the breeze as if there were a thousand tiny suns staying up late for our safe journey.
The villa cast this great shadow over the drive-way as we drove up, emphasising its rusty French beauty. Peeling paint, rusty hinges and missing pieces of stone made up the facade. It was inconsistent, and messy, and my first holiday home.
Our trip was a diversion, or should I say an extension, on a trip to Paris. A timely call from my uncle meant we finished up our Paris trip and hopped on a plane, tracing a trail down the curve of the Earth, to Bordeaux. From there, a train journey to Agen, and finally, a clueless tour of the countryside until we ended up near a place called Villeneuve-sur-Lot, named literally for being near the River Lot. Throughout all this our holiday was characterised by taxi-drivers happy to pretend they were lost to hapless English tourists (and mine and my sister's inability to decide whether gauche or droite was left or right made matters stickier).
So when we ended up in our villa, we were six hundred miles away from the total eclipse that was due to happen August 11, 1999. This meant that while my friends ventured down to Cornwall to peer at the weird, cold eclipse, me and my family stood around in swimming costumes on a scorching patio, trying to capture a glimpse of the sun with the help of a ping-pong bat. The crumbly villa walls were no use as they were full of shadows even in full sunlight.
Now, we do have some photos of the 'penumbra', the shadowy edge of a partial eclipse. They are not quite what we were hoping for. Mostly, my mum balancing on one leg, in swimming costume, extending a ping pong bat on which to reflect the sun and the moon, trying to avoid her own shadow ruining the image, and also trying to avoid melting her eyes in the process. No success was had with the ping pong bat but what we are left with is a brilliant example of my mother's willingness to do anything that might impress her truly geeky daughters. As it is, I much prefer this memory of a blindingly white table-tennis bat to anything else of that holiday. The whole week is characterised by sunflowers and sunshine - nothing even slightly shadowy about it remains. And that's my story of missing a partial eclipse.
Lovely again, this gleams with nostalgia and wit.
ReplyDeleteLovely.