Corn Moon eclipse

I didn't sleep all that well, and got up after the eight o'clock news. I made breakfast for us then Owain left to return to Bristol, with a busy day ahead of him. I prepared lunch, then went to St Catherine's Eucharist. There were about three dozen adults and ten children, including two babes in arms and an assortment of exuberant toddlers and primary school age children. Sunday Club has resumed, so the children have a session of their own during the Ministry of the Word, and join the rest of as at Communion time. I love the way the children gather and wave to the choir as they process out at the end of the service, something which started spontaneously with one toddler doing it earlier in the year.

When I arrived home, Clare had just come down stairs to start cooking the lunch I'd already prepared, and then returned to bed, to eat it in comfort half an hour later. I slept in the chair for a while after eating, then went out to buy some more fruit at the big Co-op before walking in the park for an hour. After supper I went out again, down to Pontcanna to see if I could observe the full moon eclipse. 

Unfortunately there were layers of stratus cloud. I was there at the time of moonrise, but it was another twenty minutes by the time it was visible above the trees along the Taff, but it was already too late to see the full eclipse, unusually long though it was on this occasion, nearly an hour. When the moon peeped through, the visible portion was small and brightly lit. After emerging from the cloud layer, about two thirds of the moon was still dark red, obscured by the shadow of the earth. We were living in Queen Anne Square in the city centre the last time I saw an eclipse, nearly full on that occasion I recall, but not quite.

Kath called me while I was watching and we talked through plans to rendezvous at Didcot Parkway for the last leg of the journey to Newbury to meet Veronica on the 20th of this month. She's going to make enquiries of Pete Brand, John's son, who lives in that vicinity about the best place to eat.

I returned home and watched another episode of Ridley before bed. As I closed the bedroom curtains, I saw the moon directly overhead surrounded by with stratus clouds blown east by the wind. It reminded my of the opening of Walter de la Mare's poem 'The Highwayman' -

'The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas'

I'll look at my moonrise photos tomorrow.