Loony Solstice

I'm roused from a dozing sleep this morning by The Old Man shouting:

"Do you want to see the lunar eclipse?"

And how can a girl refuse?

Staggering to a window, fuddled up in me dressing gown, I stare where The Old Man is pointing into the dawny dark blue sky. There - a small orangey dot is pulsating.

"Hang on. I need me glasses." I stagger off and hobble back wearing the specs.

"Ooh yes." say I, as all is revealed and I see a full white moon being eaten into by the orangish shadow of the Earth.

We stand side by side in the west-facing window, me secretly hugging the warm radiator, and watch the slow and absorbing sight of the full lunar eclipse.

Neighbours' security lights flash on and off; the rubbish cart comes rumbling up the hill, a man leaps out, takes a neighbour's bin bag and hurling it into the back of the cart jumps into the cab, reverses the cart, and rumbles off; a neighbour comes out, tells off someone inside their house before returning, their security lights flash on and off; someone else comes out - looks around- goes back inside their house.

Above these events, two moonstruck faces stare out of a window into the early morning winter sky above the West Penwith hills. And the silver moon is slowly eaten up by a red shadow .... until a cloud bank and increasingly daylit sky finishes the show.