Updates from around here and the Eclipse

Taken at 9.47am

We've been running in and out all morning trying to catch a glimpse of the eclipse.   And we saw it!! Fantastic... The cloud broke twice early on and we caught a very quick look, through Tom's welding mask.   I tried to capture it on camera, but the sky is too bright or else too cloudy, but the cloud is fabulous ...

It's really eerie - the birds have stopped singing - they think it's bedtime and it got dark enough around 9.30 that the automatic lights were coming on outside.   Some a fabulous phenomena to even be able to notice if not totally witness.   Apparently there's a fantastic view up around the Faroe Islands around now.  (9.40)

Well, things have been crazy busy here - again.   I find it very hard coping when there are too many different things going on... Being busy at one thing is fine, but when it's multiples my mainframe just crashes and I can't sleep.

So I've taken a few decisions.
Firstly I'm not going to take part in the A to Z challenge this year.   I've signed up and have bits of preparation done, but it's just too much.   So i'm just going to enjoy reading as much as I can of the other participants and just try and get back to some normal blogging which has backed up on me.

Last Saturday Csilla and I launched The Emigrant Woman's Tale to a packed Book Corner here in Rostrevor - it's a tiny place and people were standing inside the doors.   It was very well recieved and people picked up on lots of themes we hadn't even considered.   Our main focus was on emigration/imigration, mainly her escape from behind the Iron Curtain.  Read more about it here.
But it also unlocked the whole feeling that I grew up with, of the silence - being afraid to speak in case people heard our accents in the 80s in England or further afield, and not being allowed to talk openly here because you never knew who could be listening or who you might offend and what they'd do if they became offended.  Thankfully we no longer feel that now, but the immigrants coming here must surely feel it.

We launched a book and CD to accompany the show .. more about that later.

Hold on - it's out again ... 9.47 - we caught it on the other side ... better pictures this time ... the green one is taken through a welders mask ....exciting start to Friday.

9.48am

10.04am

And the last bit of this week was the sad news that we buried one of the members of our choir ...  She was with us straight after Christmas and and died on St Patrick's Day.  We are a small group and this has hit us hard ... We sang our hearts out on Wednesday night to just get on with life.

The choir on 6th December - Brona on the left.

St Patricks' Day sort of passed in a blur ... there was a big parade in Downpatrick and another in Belfast but of course that ended up in a bit of trouble.  It's sad that our national holiday can be celebrated peacefully everywhere else in the world except here.  In our local town it's the funfare and kids running around with Tricolours over their shoulders looking every bit as bad as the kids running around with Union Jacks around their shoulders on the 12th July.  It's better to stay in and do some gardening or work.  But I hope you had a lovely day if you were celebrating for us.