The Lunar Eclipse

MOON OVER MIAMI AND MIDHURST

Realistically speaking, there aren’t a great many things that one can say that Miami and Midhurst have in common. Miami is extremely short of castle ruins for one thing, and the main road that runs through this town would have room for four sets of the A272. There are a couple of British style “pubs” but you have to travel a fair way to find them, and you are far more likely to dine out on tacos and empanadas than shepherds pie or fish and chips. But last night, we were happily aware that we were all agreed on one thing; the lunar eclipse.
By the time that the sun was sinking behind us into the western sky, all eyes were fixed eastwards out across the warm Atlantic waters off the south Florida coastline. A low bank of thin cloud threatened to spoil the show, but that didn’t deter families, couples, kids and seniors from setting up camp all along the beach. Some forward thinking official had undertaken to dim the new lamps that illuminate the three mile promenade along the Hollywood seafront, and restaurant owners and bar keepers had organised their normal inside seating to face out to sea.
One of the most evocative sights on the east Florida coastline is the silhouette of palm trees against the fading evening sky, and last night they barely moved in the warm tropical breeze that gently ruffled their fronds.
“Here it comes” went up the cry and through the haze of cloud, we could see a thin crescent of silver, growing slowly bigger as it climbed into the clear sky.
“Moon over Miami” crooned some amateur tenor, and the children paused in their games of beach football, and adults raised their glasses of chilled wine to the heavens.
Toasting the moon seemed like an odd thing to do, but I realised that it was the same moon that linked me to my friends in Midhurst, my old stamping ground in South Africa and my children in Australia, and although my grasp of the planetary system is extremely weak to say the least, I knew that this same moon was shining down on all of us, and for once it gave me a feeling of being at one with the universe.
Then the lamps were turned back on, the barstools were turned back inwards, the music was turned up and the magic moment was gone, but for what it’s worth, I did think of you in Midhurst.
Keep in touch with Kate at www.fagalde.co.uk