Time Warp

My HTB has a habit of keeping random videos of programmes he recorded to watch at a later date. Mostly these are films, but we get some real little gems like pre-millennium Glastonbury, ancient Proms concerts and suchlike. Consequently, we live in a sort of twilight zone from time to time.

As I type, HTB is sitting transfixed in front of the TV watching Phillipa Forrester hiding under an umbrella talking to some old lass on a beach in Cornwall. Cue: the Solar Eclipse of 1999. Now Michael Buerk is showing us the sun looking like Pacman, and various other BBC numpties are waxing lyrical about the magical experience. My auntie was working as a nurse in Cornwall at the time, and said that all the local people would be glad when it was over. All leave was cancelled in the emergency services that day, because they were expecting a load of people to run into the sea. What has running into the sea got to do with an eclipse?

Countdown to totality

There’s something quite surreal about watching the countdown to an eclipse which happened nearly nine years ago. I did party quite a bit in 1999 as it turns out, but it was also a year for anti-climax. This eclipse was so totally hyped up, that on the actual day it could only ever be a disappointment. I seem to remember seeing the eclipse from the farm yard where I was working during the summer break from University. We stopped for tea to watch the partial eclipse. It didn’t get that dark, but it was kind of quiet and eerie how the birds stopped singing. The best bit was the fact that it took place at 11.11am on the 11th August, kind of cool.

The biggest anti-climax was yet to come…

The hype surrounding the eclipse was itself eclipsed by the hoopla that was the Millennium. Planes would fall out of the sky, computers and household appliances would cease to work, due to the Millennium Bug, it was predicted. Here is a fantastic quotation from the BBC H2G2 website:

 ”Nobody is quite certain how big a problem the Millennium Bug will actually be. Some people are stockpiling toilet paper while others are blowing their noses with total abandon. A sustained theory is that the only machines that will truly be affected by the Y2K bug are time machines. This would explain why nobody has visited us from the future to allay our concerns.”

Even Tony Blair got in on the act of promoting this paranoia. Actually, it shouldn’t be that much of a surprise because governments like to keep people just a little bit paranoid.

The usual New Year crap, but more so

Millennium eve was pumped up out of all proportion, as if Cliff Richard needed an excuse to produce more saccharine seasonal crap. Prices rocketed skywards for anyone who wanted to go out that night, but I was not-so-secretly pleased about the fact that the greed of the pubs and clubs led to many people opting out and holding their own house parties. The jewel in the crown of mediocrity was the Millennium Dome (more like a pancake), which subsequently lay empty for a number of years before finally finding its niche as the O2 Arena.

A national institution

I just love how the BBC can make a celestial event into a 2 hour show, complete with Jamie Theakston and crap puns. We even got demonstrations of how the eclipse occurs using beach balls, and an insight that Phillipa Forrester, like Alanis Morissette before her has no idea what “ironic” actually means. I do feel for Michael Buerk, who clearly ran out of anything to say after about the first 20 minutes. I imagine him drawing the short straw in the BBC newsroom at having to anchor that show. Makes me proud to be British.

Hope you enjoyed this little trip down memory lane. Back here in the present I am feeling really pleased as I have done all my chores and went for another healthy walk at lunchtime. 

Not sure what this has to do with Experiments in Living? Neither am I to tell the truth, but I felt the need to share this surreal moment. As always, comments are welcome