^
Right. I'd looked forward to this solar eclipse for the small manner of some ten years. By the time it came around I had a gf who shared my enthusiasm so come the day we were both basically wetting our knickers at what was about to happen. Except we awoke in our tent that morning, on the most beautiful campsite in Cornwall, to find nothing but dark grey skies.
Already I've missed a little bit out. My government, the UK govt, is basically the biggest party pooper in the world. We'd had days, weeks even, of warnings not to visit Cornwall, how all roads in would be blocked and how the army were going to take control. I shit ye not. So none of our friends came, all being wusses scared off by govt propaganda. And guess what? The propaganda worked. Cornwall was fucking empty. In August. Cornwall is reliant on the holiday season, being stuck as it is at the end of England. To say its inhabitants were slightly pissed off at the govt propaganda, which cost them a fortune, is way understating things.
Back to the day. GF made us drive all over Cornwall for hours, looking for a break in the clouds. There was none. Eventually we returned to our beautiful campsite, completely fucked off at ten years of being looked forward to being wasted to the mercy of the clouds (welcome to England).
We had drugs. We took the drugs anyway, climbed a tree ten minutes before the allotted eclipse time and sat there prepared to cry. Then the most amazing thing happened. With literally a minute to go, a hole in the clouds began to appear. There were others in a field next to us who began to cheer. We jumped down from our tree and joined them. With just seconds to go, a hole in the clouds appeared totally around the eclipsing sun. There is actually a word for this, a known phenomenon. I don't know that word. But it was magical. That day we were the only people to witness the proper total eclipse, just a handful of devotees in a field in the right place, at the right time, in a field in Cornwall. A professional photographer who happened to be in a tent nearby even captured the moment for us, pics that still have pride of place in my house today.
And that wasn't even the end of it.
We returned to our tent, tripping madly by now. A farmer approached us. "Would you like to come to a party on my farm? I've got food (unnecessary), alcohol and decks and a DJ in my cow sheds" We didn't need asking twice. We were tripping but this was real. He had gone around campsites looking for like minds (drug takers). We spent the next ten hours with lovely people discussing the eclipse, listening to banging music and everyone sharing whatever drugs they had with them.
And that, my friends, was the best day of my life by about a million miles.