Eclipse

Deep into August now, the season of holidays, it seems everyone is on the move. North Hertfordshire might not feature in many travel pages, but it’s where my parents live, where I spent my teenage years, and I have just returned from a quiet week there full of thrilling ordinaryness. My parents downsized a few years before the pandemic, leaving behind a massive garden with a greenhouse and vegetable patch, mature fruit trees, and they have been quietly transforming the garden in their new home. It’s a fight against sterility, the surrounding gardens in this leafy 1980s development are high on the neatness scale. And peace is sometimes hard to come by when the phalanx of power tools is unleashed, a sense that plants are something to be battled with. Hearing a whirring whine one morning I expressed surprise that anyone would be mowing grass as all I could see was dusty and yellow. Probably someone hoovering their artificial lawn, my mum replied archly.

The plastic grass next door did glisten greenly, in contrast to ranks of dry stalks and curling leaves surrounding it. The heat has hit hard here, and no rain for months. I think back to my visit in spring, everything damply bursting into life, dad and I weeding together and chatting about compost. I worry about the effect of the heat on my parents' bodies too, there were several days last week where the temperatures were in the mid-30s, leaving us to huddle inside with the curtains drawn, an electric fan doing its best to stir the thick soupy air. Sitting out in the shade of the summerhouse early one morning I spotted a robin, hopping across the dry grass in search of insects, his feathers looked paler than usual, as if even he had been sunbleached. Photos of this summer will look luminous, and they will capture some happy memories, but won’t tell the whole story. As the robin and I regarded each other, I noticed a rare splash of green, a sturdy patch of ragwort with flowers like little suns on my weather app. Throughout the week I noticed butterflies and bees gratefully alighting on this tiny oasis, industriously sipping nectar before flitting off again.

The sun of course was another major story of last week, with the eclipse dominating the news on Wednesday. I watched the 6pm BBC news bulletin with my parents, something that I rarely do at home. You could almost sense the relief amongst the newsreaders, finally here was something genuinely rare and awe-inspiring, a once in a generation story. A break from the swirling chaos of headlines, although not completely, as the obligatory ticker tape display undercuts and runs across all bulletins now. Don’t forget the strife, the drought, the climate chaos. But part of me thrilled to the idea of so many humans, millions of them, all focussed on one event, the moon moving in front of the sun. And I felt the pull of connection to humans back through time. As the eclipse progressed we ventured out to the front of the house with our colander and hastily pin-holed card. My teenage daughter was already out there and excitedly reported that a neighbour had let her look through their special eclipse glasses. Suddenly crescent shadows were everywhere, multiples cast through colanders onto t-shirts, feathery ones dancing across tarmac and fences. Mum says they don’t often see their neighbours here, everyone is so busy, and these houses are well spaced and generously gardened, encouraging separation. Celestial bodies moving in space brought us together, if only briefly.

We can kid ourselves that in our industrialised civilisation that we are disconnected from the natural world, that we sorted out the basics of food and clean water long ago, allowing us to turn our attention to loftier ambitions like rockets to mars, or endless Tiktoks of mindless fluff. But drought like this in the UK pushes a little button in the back of our heads, a niggling sense of unease and wrongness. Deep in our bodies we know that water is life. The trick is sustaining our attention and doing the work that needs to be done when summer is past.

Photo shows my parents parched lawn, with what I think is probably Oxford Ragwort (Senecio squalidus). Like many UK weeds it is probably the descendant of an escapee from a botanic garden in the 1700s. This week I've read a lot, as I've been busy resting and relaxing. I read The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradbury, Chart Throb by Ben Elton, plus Silent Spring by Rachel Carson and some dipping into Upstream, a collection of essays by Mary Oliver.