Patrick Moore by Patrick Moore

Author:Patrick Moore
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780752473543
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2011-12-10T16:00:00+00:00

We watched with glazed and goggling eyes

As multitudes of desert flies

Surrounded us and nibbled at our coats.

We dodged the crowd of market boys

Who tried to sell us junk and toys,

And cursed us as we ran back to our boats:

(Chorus)

And as we leave this sandy land

It isn’t hard to understand

That we will come here never, never more.

One visit there was quite enough,

And Mauritania now can stuff

Its sand back whence it came in days of yore:

(Chorus)

Someone in the audience taped that song; I hear it produced occasionally even now, after more than thirty years. Long ago, but that trip was one of the happiest of my entire career.

I missed the next few eclipses for reasons which were quite clear-cut. On 27 June 1976 my mother had her ninetieth birthday; she was on great form, and it was a great occasion. We threw a major party at the Selsey Hotel, and she enjoyed it immensely; she was still able to get about. But at last the years started to take their toll. Mentally she was fine, right up to the end, but physically she was failing, and there was absolutely nothing that would take me away from her side. ‘Woody’ – Mrs Woodward – came originally as a housekeeper, but turned into the most devoted friend, and for the last two years of Mother’s life she did day duty, while I took over at night. Everything else went by the board, all I did was to cope with The Sky at Night and work away at my typewriter when I could, snatching sleep during the day if possible. Mother knew the score: ‘My body is worn out’ she said, and of course she was right.

Though I knew it was going to happen, I simply could not take it when the curtain finally fell, on 7 January, 1981 – the worst day of my life since Lorna made her exit. But there it was, and the only course was to settle down and accept the situation. Woody stayed – until she too died more than ten years later, leaving an unfillable void.

Back to eclipses . . . The East Indies, in June 1983. I joined a party bound for Java, which was new territory for me. Shortly before eclipse day the skies were hopelessly overcast, and the outlook was bleak. However, we kept hoping; statues of Buddha were everywhere, and we offered up prayers on the grounds that since he was the local god he might feel able to help. He did; the clouds rolled away, and we all had a perfect view. One of our party commented that he was a useful old Buddha. (I think he said Buddha.)

Our next eclipse foray, in 1988, took us to Talikud Island. I had never heard of it, but when I looked it up I found that it is small (a few miles long) and lies in Davao Bay in the Philippines, within six degrees of the equator. Davao is the main city of Mindanao, the

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