Ground breaking science part two!

The continuing adventures of a girl trying to achieve forty things before she hits the grand old age of forty, although not necessarily in the right order...

When I first drew up my list of forty things, I didn’t actually stop to think how many of them were achievable within the time-frame. It was, therefore, a complete coincidence that number 35- Witness an eclipse, occurred on March 20^th 2015.

I did imagine it would be a bit more dramatic; perhaps standing in a blistering desert watching the sky plunge into apocalyptic darkness. However, happen it did and as we all know the list is the list, so here’s the blog.

I should say before I continue that that sounds ungrateful. It was fun and I’m glad it happened, especially as even Prof Cox would struggle to engineer an unplanned eclipse. There is that episode in Red Dwarf where they use the planets like pool balls, but I digress.

The universe rather handily timed the eclipse for my Friday morning off work. As I work in a basement, it would otherwise have been very annoying. Scotland also did a good job of pulling off some pretty decent weather. All the elements having done their fare share, I did my own preparation for the eclipse by running around an extinct volcano. As a sci-fi fan, I’m aware that unusual scientific phenomena are often accompanied by monsters/zombies. It’s always good to be fit for the occasion.

My fellow scientist and I assembled the optimum lab conditions (some sunny garden steps and a nice cup of earl grey) and set up our observation station (a home-made pin-hole camera). Like the Doctor I’m very keen on a home-made ‘lash up’. In his case, perhaps a neutrino converter knocked up with the aid of a multi-quatiscope, sonic screwdriver, some fiddly bits of wire and some string. In our case our pin hole camera was, well, a pin hole in a bit of envelope actually, but it did the trick.   

As I say, it could have been more dramatic. I recall the eclipse a few years back. I witnessed that one sat in a Cornish fog and the sky really did plunge into full night-time darkness. This time it was more a case of an eerie half light. Enough to make the birds sound a bit confused, but not quite apocalyptic enough to lure out the unusual phenomena or monsters. Still I didn’t regret my pre-science run. It made it easier to enjoy the post-science fried potatoes. I was a bit jealous of the next door neighbours’ slightly more impressive pin hole box viewer and digital camera, but then that’s the point of a lash up. It’s lashed up.

So the would-be apocalypse went very peacefully. My tea got a bit cold and so did I. No aeroplanes fell out of the sky. No zombies appeared. The pin hole sized sun projected onto our bit of cardboard went a funny shape, then back into a circle again. The world returned to normal.

Perhaps this blog entry might have been more exciting if I’d witnessed the eclipse from an aeroplane over the Hebrides. Instead, I enjoyed it with a cup of tea on a nice morning sitting in the garden.

However, in my mind the moral of this story is that nice, peaceful days are sometimes just as worthy of recording as dramatic ones. When you have a bit of a flat day, it is often the memory of a pleasant beach walk, or a sunny morning sat in the garden drinking tea, that you go to for good cheer.

Life can’t all be about running away from Daleks and actually that’s a good thing, as I’m sure the Doctor would agree.