Solar eclipse, French-style

The internet today is full of solar eclipse photographs.

Some of the best I’ve seen are not of the sun being eaten by the moon but the mottled crescent-shaped shadows created in the streets, in bedrooms and on furniture.

Here in south west France, we had a great view from the village boulodrome. Folk brought along food to share. Word had clearly got around that this was a good spot. Various groups, mostly French, sat in chairs and on picnic rugs to enjoy the spectacle.

When it came, the special eclipse glasses made it an incredible experience.

There were others using welding masks and goggles, as well as pinhole cameras made out of boxes.

I managed to get the shot below by holding my eclipse glasses over the camera on my phone, early on in the process. Not the best image, but you get the picture.

Unlike in 1999, when the UK had a total eclipse, this one was only partial – about ninety seven or eight per cent for us.

It was humbling to appreciate the sun’s mighty force, even when its battery is drained to the last few percent.

It went a bit darker, but not like in 1999 when the eclipse was in the middle of the day rather than at sunset.

The streetlights didn’t come on this time, nor did the birds suddenly go quiet after coming into roost.

Still, it was shared experience and people in various countries enjoyed this natural phenomenon. Truly awesome, in the absolutely real sense of the word.

Sunset itself was pretty wonderful, too.

And then -much, much later – it wa the turn of the Perseids meteor shower, which was ‘like a movie’ according to one of my friends who just happened to wake at two-thirty in the morning and remembered to go outside and look at the sky.

We saw several shooting stars before we went to bed, but also so many fast-moving satellites, which were never really a part of the night sky when I was a young child in the 1960s.

Anyway, thank you, Sun and Moon, for forgetting your differences and coming together for such a spectacular occasion.

I’m off for a sleep now.

Speak soon.

Love, Maddie x

Eclipse ready and waiting in France

Well, it’s the eclipse tomorrow night and, here in south west France, we’re having a party down by the boulodrome to welcome it.

In what’s called an ‘l’auberge espagnole’ (in the UK, we’d say ‘bring food to share’ and in the States they’d call it a ‘pot luck supper’), we’ll have plenty to eat as we gaze at the night sky, ready for the big event and then maybe the annual Perseids meteor shower a bit later on.

Much earlier, just before sunrise, we’ll have the grand parade pf six planets aligning in the morning sky.

So quite a few lovely celestial happenings all on one day.

I feared I might only be able to view just two of them when my promised eclipse glasses failed to arrive on time via Amazon, despite ordering them two weeks ago.

Like everywhere else, there’s a run on these special specs and even E Leclerc has sold out.

But La Poste has just come by and delivered my lunettes.

I was so happy I almost hugged the postwoman.

Back in 1999, I was editor of The Bridport & Lyme Regis News. I saw the total eclipse while perched on the rickety steps to our old office, which should have been condemned to be honest, but this was in the days when local newspaper offices were famous for being squalid to say the least.

The one upshot was the office was at the heart of the community so we had stories coming into us in person on a regular basis.

At the allotted time, the eclipse did its thing, the lights in Bridport’s main street came on and the birds came home to roost.

Down at West Bay, where my chief reporter was installed, the seagulls did not know if they were coming or going as darkness fell on the many spectators and holidaymakers soaking up the view.

A young Number One Son climbed Hincknowle Hill on the other side of the road from The Half Moon Inn at Melplash (which his stepdad and I were running at the time) and watched it with Mr Grigg and a group of fascinated villagers.

It was one of those very unforgettable experiences.

The one tomorrow night will be a deep partial eclipse for the UK (about 95.8 per cent at Lands End) and about 99.5 per cent for us in France.

Now I’ve got the glasses, I’m looking forward to it.

Take care out there.

Love, Maddie x

Okay, French heatwave, you can stop now

Here in South West France there is little let-up in the rampaging heatwave.

Occasionally, a storm will break the stalemate and the plants breathe a sigh of relief and stop slouching for just a second. But then we’re back on the endless treadmill of feeling hot, hot, hot.

There are clouds in the sky this morning and a slight breeze whipping around my bare feet so I’m using the time in my little office to get on with some project planning.

I’ve done some writing, done some editing and now it’s time to sit back and think about marketing my new novel, which is due out on Kindle later this month and will be launched as a paperback in the autumn.

I’m also working on a narrative non-fiction story which will take me halfway around the world and probably won’t be finished until 2028.

So there’s plenty going on in my head, but the heat makes my brain scramble and opens the door for lethargy to just come on in and wipe its feet all over my creativity.

In other news, the travelling pan has arrived for the village’s Giant Omelette fete on Friday evening.

I’m presuming it was delivered on this trailer although, in a flight of fancy, I imagine it obligingly rolling up the hill and parking itself in its annual spot before thundering on down to another local community event.

It serves a variety of uses round and about, including accommodating another village’s Giant Paella and then someone else’s Moules Evening.

It’s a very helpful and useful little big pan.

I think I’m going for a lie-down, the heat seems to be getting to me.

That’s about it.

Love, Maddie x

PS You’d think the heat would stem my appetite. However, I live with a foodie who loves to cook and also to eat.

Stormy weather

There was a massive storm where we are in south west France last night.

The crack of thunder was so fearfully loud, I fully expected the house to be cleaved right in half when I ventured out with the dogs first thing this morning.

The last time I’d heard such a roaring snap here was a couple of years ago when one of the garden walls was struck by lightning and tumbled into pieces.

This time, fortunately, the house was still standing. The ground was saturated with much-needed rain and the outside water butt was full to the brim.

There was a marvellous freshness to the air which I could almost taste.

The change in the weather is a welcome break from the soaring temperatures we’ve been experiencing for many weeks.

Family, friends and even readers of my People’s Friend column have been in touch, worrried we might have been caught up in the terrible fires that have swept through tinder-dry pine forests near Bordeaux.

We are fine, but the horror continues for so many in France, and in Spain, too. I heard that even Scotland is not immune, with smoke from a wild fire in the Cairngorms blowing into Aberdeen, nearly 60 miles away.

Climate change is the biggest threat to humanity and we ignore it at our peril.

The lower tempteratures continue here for a day or so and then it’s back to the new normal, with the weather app on my phone showing 38 degrees on Wednesday.

Take care, wherever you are.

Reaction to The Odyssey

So, was it worth driving an hour there and back to see The Odyssey on the big screen?

Yes. A definite yes.

I thoroughly enjoyed this Christopher Nolan version of Homer’s epic, with its monster-laden voyage to mythical Ithaka led by a grizzled Matt Damon.

When I read The Odyssey many moons ago, I really felt that yearning for home, the pull of place. However, in the film, Odysseus is reluctant to return, his battle scars heavy and his guilt at the decisions he has made pulling at his internal heart strings.

Classicists will point out deviations from the original poem but you wouldn’t know if you hadn’t read it. And it’s a film, which has a totally different way of telling a story.

Personally, I felt sorry for poor old Corfu in that the hero’s penultimate destination and the delightful Princess Nausikaa don’t put in an appearance.

Scheria, the home of the seafaring Phaeacians, is widely thought to have been Corfu and the Ionian island makes no secret of this connection with one of the greatest stories ever told.

The beach at Paleokastritsa, Corfu, in August 2015 for the Varkarola re-enactment of Odysseus shipwrecked on Scheria

So Corfu won’t benefit from the film at all, while tiny, rocky, inaccessible Ithaka must be preparing itself for an influx of movie fans.

The beach at Polis, Ithaka.

There are many five stars reviews of The Odyssey and discussions over the peripheral role of women in the movie. I’m giving it four because nothing is perfect.

I take on board the complaints about the subordinate depiction of the female sex in the film and jettisoning some of Homer’s nuance, but it was ever thus.

If you went looking for a feminist angle in Nolan’s film then you’d be looking in the wrong place. However, I adored Samantha Morton’s portrayal of Circe and the way she dealt with Odysseus’s greedy crew. I won’t spoil it but the scene is a satisfying shocker.

While the women in the film don’t actually do very much, I did get the overriding sense of male selfishness, power and the endless search for dominance through senseless war, which hasn’t changed since ancient times.

There were a couple of wincing moments for me, such as Odysseus’s son talking about ‘my dad’ and the Laestrygonians emerging through the tall trees in the forest in a scene worthy of Monty Python and The Holy Grail and the Knights who say Ni.

But, all in all, The Odyssey is a story well told, both visually and orally, with the poem’s episodic scenes all working seamlessly from the outset, with Odysseus telling the tale of his voyage to Calypso until he is finally ready to leave her island after seven long years.

And despite the film lasting nearly three hours, the time just romped by.

If you do go and see it, let me know what you think.