Lit Lab Eclipse Special

Some of our regular participants – yes, we now have regulars – suggested we move to an outdoor location for the August 2026 Lit Lab to watch the eclipse together. So we decided to relocate to the river – it was a busy evening in the garden of the pub, with everyone setting up to watch the sun disappear. Not many people had glasses but some came with binoculars for a special set-up, some with colanders, others with self-made pin-hole cameras. Others relied on the dappled light filtering through the leaves. Everyone in the pub was animated and excited and our group at a round table exchanged memories of previous astronomical happenings.

We had prepared a short collection of solar eclipse myths from around the world: the sun is swallowed by a wolf, a bear, a serpent, a giant frog, played with by a dog, hidden by a raven. It inspired us to write and draw our own myths of the eclipse. “A Modern British Myth” shows an Amazon Prime van squashing a Greggs’ steak bake. Some concluded the gods must be angry and wondered whether a sacrifice might appease them. One of us imagined he is Ötzi, the prehistoric alpinist. He sees the sun disappear and thinks it’s the end of the world, so throws himself off a cliff. If only he had listened to the stories of his forebears – calamity befalls the unprepared. We had a good giggle about it all.

There were other stories about the sun goddess and moon goddess uniting in love. The moon turning the sun into another moon. Just for an hour in the span of a lifetime, they swap places to better understand each other.

One of us must have been hungry: “The moon is a delicious cheese that is being consumed by a hungry sun. After a while, the sun is rather full, so doesn’t have room for it all!”