By the Light of the Silchester Moon!

When I saw the reports in the press about the possibility of the aurora borealis lighting up the skies last week, my heart skipped a few beats with excitement! My heart is something I try and take a great deal of care over, so it takes something pretty powerful to stir it up... the aurora is one of those things!

My poor old heart has really taken a bit of a battering lately, so it was with some excitement and a huge amount of hope that I set out towards the ruined remains of Rome (erm, well, in Silchester actually!), hoping to see a glorious display of dazzling light and astronomical fury as charged particles from the solar storms whipped and collided across the ionosphere!

So that was a waste of time then.



And my heart sank. Again.

As the clouds roll back into my heart, so the banks of cloud and mist crept over the night sky and obliterated any last remaining hope that something wonderful might actually happen for me. Deeply disappointed. Again.

I knew it was a bit of a ridiculous fancy really. The chances of seeing the aurora down here in the south are so small that it would have been a minor miracle to have seen it. But I've always been an optimist and am ever hopeful that finally, one day, things will happen the way I dream about them!!

It was also a very vain hope given the brightness of the moon that night. Still, faint hearts won't ever be truly happy or fulfilled, so I set my hopes high and my heart afire to see if at least one of my dreams might come true.

Obviously it didn't, but, not to be too down-hearted, I thought I'd make the best of things and try and salvage something from the ruins!



Silchester is a tremendously exciting place to be at midnight... my senses were on fire even if the sky wasn't!!

With owls hooting and foxes crying, the mist rolling in and Orion looking down from the darkness above, the ancient walls were sparkling under the touch of moonbeams... and I could swear that I heard the thunder of centurions feet approaching through the depths of ages past, ready to appear at any moment in my rather nervous future... Amazing how the sound of a train in the distance can sound so much like marching on an old Roman wall when there's nobody else around and the clock strikes twelve!

So, no aurora after all, but at least I managed a few starry shots and a few long exposures of the landscape as seen by the light of the Silchester moon! Hopes and dreams must always live on, I'm not giving up on any of them, not yet. They may need a bit of tweaking and adapting, and maybe even change altogether, but I shall always live in hope that one day, just for once, my dreams might come true!

Rebecca, x

rebecca@rtphotographics.co.uk
www.rtphotographics.co.uk