Kings and Comets

In days of myth and legend the births, deaths and marriages of Kings and Princes were presaged by comets. Today, on International Happiness Day and Vernal Equinox there's an Eclipse of our Sun by a Supermoon, and the Substation Druid makes his workplace farewells in the local hostelry. Today, more than any other day leading up to the end of the month, it's got really real. Only one working week left.

After nearly thirty years in the same industry, the idea of not doing the day job is odd. Giving back keys and access codes to places I'll never visit again, keys to a car I'll not need in the future... Handing back the mobile, with the number I've had since portable phones had car batteries to power them and the pre-Internet was a 75 baud acoustic coupler away... And nobody will be phoning me at two o'clock in a cold rainy morning to drag me out to system faults (yay!).

Now, everybody's been taking pictures of the eclipse, why should I be any different. So there I am, in the substation, balancing the dSLR in one hand, and with the other one holding a glass welding shield and trying to find some kind of focus. Click, goes the camera. Oops, goes the telecom engineer. Smash, goes the welding glass. So in the end it was only this dreadful shot that took place, with the fingernail of the eclipse reflected in the dirty fingerprints on the glass. 

Oh well, there'll be another along any time soon...