Getting lighter

- so the eclipse must be pretty much past.

It's cloudy enough here that that's all I can really say. There were patches of blue in the sky early on, but not enough for us to rig up some way of actually watching the eclipse. It did get noticeably darker, and at one point the sky cleared enough that the houses I see through the kitchen window (over the washing up) glowed with a sort of dark brightness, which was rather fine.

durham_rambler watched it on television, but I felt no need to do that: I've seen pictures of eclipses before. The real thing is special, but pictures - even live pictures - are just pictures. But I sneaked a quick glance up at the clouds, and saw through the veil a crescent of sun - and then looked away quickly, because even this was too bright for comfort.

EtA: Meanwhile, in Orkney:

Thanks, John!

Serial fidelity

Half listening to Chain Reaction on the radio while I was cooking, earlier this week, I heard one of the participants say: "When I finish reading a book, I want a break before I start another - otherwise I feel as if I'm being unfaithful..." Context is all, and I wasn't paying enough attention to know how far this was intended as a joke. I don't know how much I agree with it, either. On the one hand, while I rarely close one book and pick up the next (light one book from the stub of the previous one?), I'd feel uneasy if I was nearing the end of a book without knowing where the next one was coming from - and have been known to take a spare to bed with me, just in case.

But the remark chimed with something I've been thinking about reading series of books, which is that sometimes I have precisely that feeling of not wanting to rush into the next in the series, and sometimes the opposite, I'm impatient for more. ( Rambles about reading )