Country diary: Solar eclipse night was a phenomenon – who cares if it was cloudy? | Mary Montague

Lisnabreeny, Co Down: There was little fanfare beforehand, but when the moment arrived, so did a group of strangers with a sense of occasion

“Eclipses be – predicted – / And Science bows them in –” wrote the poet Emily Dickinson. As last Wednesday’s solar eclipse was bowed in across my news apps, those lines resonated with me. Dickinson’s masterly use of dashes to suspend the word “predicted” mirrored my experience of the Met Office’s forecast, which kept me teetering between hope and dismay all day and for days before.

Ahead of the appointed time, we had scouted the hills for a commanding view of the western horizon, and to get a sense of it on an ordinary sunlit evening. There were swallows skimming over the stubble grass and rooks clamouring in the trees. At that stage, the few people I encountered were unaware that a deep partial eclipse was even going to happen.