SOLAR ECLIPSE, AUGUST 11th. 1999.

THE ANCIENT IRON-AGE FORT AT HOLLINGBURY, BRIGHTON.

- - -Time flows to the eleventh hour on an August morning bright with tenuous clouds, where we have gathered at this ruined Fort - once the look-out point of iron-age skywatchers. Long away, those who went West to Tintagel seeking totality find no magic legend - only gloom and rain - yet we have been blessed with a clear day. I am ready to become a disciple of this intangible ritual, bedecked as I am like the Queen of Sheba in my blue and gold sari, here with my sweetheart and strangers.

- - -From this lofty barrow, built of old, we see how Brighton lies; patterned and shimmering beneath an apprehensive sky. From far away where Worthing waits, along to the East where the white cliffs shine like beacons through the haze: all this we watch beyond the green sward rolling down to Hollingdean.

- - -Already in the West the sky is losing its bloom, there seems to be a shadow on the turquoise of Heaven, far away, where faint clouds lie like strata in some smoky crystal.......Then the Dragon bites - the first petal of the Sun is plucked away. Porcelain blue becomes stillness as the falling wind cools to dusk. The landscape with a shiver echoes the eerie departing of the light. Could there ever be a more graphic glimpse of "Time's winged chariot hurrying near."? The fainting day said, No.

- - -Closer still, so flawlessly the black blade leaves but a sliver of radiance in the darkling sky. High on the arc of the morning hangs this crescent Sun, where glides the dark demoness Moon to usurp his burning bow with her flight of shadow. And how, across the bridges of the years, must ancient chieftains have trembled before this swift assassin of the Light - here, on this very Fort, this holy site.

- - -All things sentient hold their breath as Time bows down to the scythe of the Sun. Listen .......somewhere in this silence beats the heart of the Earth.

- - -Enraptured quietness enshrouds the town below, as streetlights waver like fireflies in the spectral twilight. Ghostly figures haunt the spellbound streets, and no birds sing. Only the chill lamenting breeze stirs the grass on the reverent hills. Even the flamboyant pier has been transformed by some alien sorcery into a jewelled Elfin palace carved out of quartz and amethyst .....

- - -Suddenly, above the steel-dark sea a solitary star dances like a diamond behind a cirrus veil. Ah ... there are tears - we dream we are in Xanadu ....

- - -But alas, there can be no midnight at noon on this the path of the half-shade: like a winged messenger the damask light returns, softly cascading over the Downs to the quicksilver sea. Another few miles south and all the stars of Heaven would have ringed the Sun, its own corona like an opal casting pale fire among them.

- - -See how the precious vision spirits away as the grey moonshadow seeks more exotic lands across the water. Dusky-robed, it hurries on; distantly riding the clouds, ever and away, over the curve of the world.

- - -Through the gate of the next Millennium, ninety years hence, the Moon will cross the Sun again in this place. It's a long time to wait for all of us .......but we shall be here in Spirit.