Eclipse

My mum phoned with exciting news last week, Ufuk dayı was travelling out to Turkey to watch the total solar eclipse and if I wanted it there was a spare bed in the villa he and friends had rented out. A quick Skype call to dayı cemented the plans, he and twelve friends would be together and they would be delighted to receive me. Bags packed; twinkling with anticipation I boarded the small bus and bumped across the mountains. In Antalya we met beneath the crumbling clock tower and I was introduced to the group. Ufuk dayı is my mum’s favourite uncle, round and sturdy with a hearty laugh and healthy sense of humour. It was our first time together alone and he impressed me immensely with his intelligence, consideration and patience. He is the epitome of the avuncular uncle and I recommend one to all of you. The others were astronomers, artists and their lovers and they were as odd as they were individual.

Charles and Mike were my first acquaintances, Charles looks boyish with thick and floppy roughly chopped brown hair but the youthful looks belay a fatherly personality and at the event of the eclipse he would be the one shouting ‘Protection, protection!’ at those of us rash enough to attempt naked sun gazing. Mike is prematurely grey with soft blue eyes and initially reticent but beneath the reserve is a clown happy to mimic Patrick Moore at the drop of a hat and a fierce intellect. Robert, Charles’s father, meandered through our week generously effusing cherry tobacco pipe plumes in erratic waves and dispensing entertaining anecdotes, awful insults and immense flattery in equal measure – a proper English gent. Marcia and Jem shared our house, he’s a musician and sound artist, confident and quiet and despite significant fame as a member of the Pogues, quite happy to do the washing up. On our last day together we caught him filming the squeaky gate outside our house, swinging it back and forth, fast and slow, surprising its rusty hinges into a sonata. Marcia was my cigarette partner, neat and compact with flashing green eyes and tousled black hair. She was uninhibited and eccentric sliding her blanket around the balcony as we smoked like a small tangerine snail trailing its tail. With the husky voice of a thousand whisky nights she could turn any man’s head and was the Grand Dame of the house rising late and going to bed later.

Staying with a bunch of astronomers at the time of a solar eclipse is an exciting affair and my friends had been preparing and planning their Turkey trip for two years. The 48 hours before the main event were dominated by conversations of what to expect; ‘There’s an enormous sense of speed as the shadow spreads first slowly and then rushes towards you. The whole landscape takes on a grey metallic cast and the feeling is of something amazing beyond normal human experience happening.’ With 24 hours to go they were up on the sand dunes aligning their telescopes and staking early Germanic claims to various patches of high ground. Then they gathered at the villa to make their own Play School inspired eclipse sunglasses and inventively cannibalising toilet rolls to manufacture digi-cam filters from astro solar safety film. The spreading and flexing of tripods, telescopes and specialist lenses in the kitchen created an atmosphere of infectious geek machismo although I felt my camera phone was not getting the respect it deserves as an instrument of solar recording.

On eclipse day they left the villa at 9am in order to ensure pole position on the sand and when I drifted down at 1ish they were already rapt in the frenzy of first contact. Shouting instructions and information at each other, Charles insisted I translate information to the local Turks who to my eye seemed quite happy on their plastic chairs, peeling and slicing apples blissfully ignorant and fumbling with newspaper give away specs. As time wore on the first thing that was noticeable was the drop in temperature, I shrugged on a jacket and a lady previously bikini sunbathing opposite us (and showing two beautiful peachy moons) put on clothes and then a towel around her shoulders. The drop in light was largely imperceptible as my eyes adjusted incrementally and I watched the others scampering around casting eclipse shadows through their straw hats and projections via their binoculars, all the time constantly chattering. It became obvious that one of the things I had been looking forward to, the sudden stilling of bird calls and insects buzzing, would be impossible to notice over the hum of human activity.

With five minutes to go before totality the sky was dark and I was surprised at my apprehension. Primal fears came flooding in unbidden, I stared obsessively at the horizon willing myself to believe that the thin white line I could see was not a huge Tsunami wave rumbling towards us. As totality occurred and the people around me cheered and whooped I didn’t share their joy, my heart rate was right up and my skin prickled in discomfort and disquiet. I stared up at the black sun and concentrated hard on the light of the corona. When the moon slipped away I smiled involuntarily and took a deep breath, without being aware of it, my tension had caused me to lock my chest and lungs.

After the astronomers astronomical pre-eclipse explanations the actual physical phenomena of the event were not awe inspiring, I would liken it to a fast sunset and faster dawn and the expected blood red skies and sweeping silent storm shadow did not manifest themselves. What I hadn’t expected and what had startled me most was the sense of dread, an eclipse is a terrible glance into the possibilities of an abysmal grey life without the sun, the earth lying moribund and unlit. Immediately after the event most people around me were speculating on where and when the next eclipse would occur and making preliminary travel plans. For me, the chilling spectre of a soulless world had extinguished my enthusiasm and I know I will be much happier if I never see another eclipse again.