Weekly Rundown: Eclipsed

Friday was a very exciting day for me. Not only because there was the highly anticipated eclipse but also I GOT UP AT 6AM TO WALK THE DOG!

This never used to be a big deal. When we got Tara I would take her out for walks at crazy o’clock in the morning in all weathers until I discovered that neither of us actually liked this very much. We live in the grounds of a large stately home which is illuminated from the base in darkness, it’s a massive gothic mansion so it looks like something out of a Hammer Horror film. Plus the road is surrounded by trees and bushes, either on one side or both, which means when it’s dark it looks darker.

Tara’s a bit of a baby. And so am I. So as the weather worsened and the mornings stayed darker we decided we much preferred having a lie-in. So we did.

Except the weather has improved hugely and the mornings are way lighter than they were a month or two ago. I can’t count the number of times I’ve gotten up in the last few weeks, looked out the window, and realised that it would have been perfect dog walking weather. So for the last week or so I’ve been trying to drag my butt out of bed when the alarm goes off at 5:45am.

Well on Friday I did it. And it was a lovely walk. A little cloudy, lots of birdsong and it felt like I was the only person in the world. I actually took a photo and posted it on Facebook with the caption ‘The world is quiet here’; I was thinking about A Series of Unfortunate Events blog posts as I walked.

Unfortunately I did get to take any photos of the eclipse but I was lucky enough to catch a glimpse of it. This was unexpected because as I mentioned above, it was cloudy, and also I was at work when it was scheduled to be visible over us. I’d spent Thursday night wracking my brains trying to work out if I would be able to see it out the window at work (if the weather was okay) and convinced myself that I was on the wrong side of the building.

Once at work I reassessed my location and realised that I was actually perfectly situated, if it wasn’t for the clouds. However at quarter past nine the clouds thinned enough for us to get a good view of a crescent shape. To be honest, it looked like the moon, though when you looked at it carefully you could see the darker patch covering the sun. It was only for a few minutes and then a thicker patch of cloud moved across and blocked it out completely but I was thrilled to have seen anything at all.

Outside it got darker as well, though not as dark as I was expecting. Our area was supposed to get 95% coverage so I was expecting it to get really dark, but it just came over like we were going to have a really heavy downpour. A few weeks ago, one afternoon at around 3pm it got about that dark, chucked it down for about five minutes, then lightened a bit before darkening for the evening. It was weird but quite similar to the eclipse we just had.

I had a pretty busy day yesterday as well. The weather looked set to be lovely, so I hauled myself out of bed at 7am, stuck my mp3 player on and walked Tara to Calvary Pond. It's her favourite place to visit but the track gets pretty muddy in the winter (and it's quite steep) so we've not done it for about five months. Every time we walk past the turning for it, she heads over the little bridge only to be called back (with droopy ears).

Yesterday she was trotting ahead of me, she sniffed the bridge and then kept going but I turned. The look on her face as she realised we were going on her favourite walk was so cute. I wish I'd caught it on video. She flicked from confused about why I was calling her to pure excitement and charged up the track.

Above are the photos I took on the walk. The selfie was so I could post proof to Facebook that I was actually up and about at seven in the morning. The top one shows the water like glass; it was so still and quiet, just us and the birds. And that bottom photo was on the way back down the hill. I caught sight of our house across the field. You can just make out our bedroom sticking out the back of our little cottage. In a few weeks the trees will be all full of greenery and I won't be able to see it anymore.

We also spent some time clearing up the spare bedroom. We've been storing boxes in there, in case we need them, pretty much since we moved in. Over time we've gotten rid of lots of them, but I decided that the time had come to clear them all out. So we filled up two recycling bags of cardboard breaking them all up. And we also finally put the headboard onto the spare bed:

It was a perfectly adequate bed before but the headboard has finished it off nicely, making it more comfortable if someone's stopping and wanting to sit in bed and read. It couldn't have fit better either. I was a bit nervous about the sloping ceiling making it a bad fit, but it's perfect.

All in all, it’s been a pretty good week. It began with some information from Fil @ Fil's Place about my mysterious German zeppelin photo and it definitely ended well. We just have to see if I can keep up the dog walking at 6am. I’ll let you know how that one goes.