As the sky darkens, my eyes well up with hot, fat tears. I’ve spent the last hour gazing in wonder at the sun through a pair of soggy cardboard eclipse glasses, drawing sharp breaths each time the blazing circle is interrupted by another slice of blackness. The temperature drops. Goosebumps prickle my bare chest as the animated chatter around me fades to hushed awe. For more than two minutes, the rhythm of daylight is halted as we are collectively humbled by this cosmic spectacle, reminded of our smallness in this unimaginably vast universe.
A total solar eclipse is one of the world’s rarest wonders. I was six years old when I saw one for the first time, in 1999. Mum had procured a pair of eclipse glasses from a cereal box. I was perched atop a plastic chair in my back garden in Doncaster, my fingers sticky from a syrupy ice lolly. Nearly 30 years later, I can barely believe that I’m witnessing my second eclipse from a jacuzzi on the top deck of a luxury expedition cruise ship, the lolly replaced by a celebratory flute of champagne.
