Southend U3A

November 2023

Full Moon - Pete Norman

Amanda loved the moon – or, to put it into her own words, she absolutely adored the moon – it was the most amazing thing in the whole world . . . no, not ‘in the world’, she corrected herself – ‘in the whole solar system!’

Her daddy had a very big telescope – not as big as the ones the scientists used, perhaps but to a child it was absolutely humungulocious.

When Amanda was still quite small, her daddy used to take her with him to a hill, which was not far from their home and where it was really, really dark and her daddy said that the telescope could see better, because there was not a lot of light polutionationing. For some time, he also took a chair so she could reach the viewfinder but she very quickly outgrew the chair – because only babies used chairs!

They usually went there when the moon was big and round, because her daddy said that it was at its brightest when it was full and so you could see everything on it, because it didn’t have all those bits missing.

Amanda was inquisitive to the point of obsession; she asked questions about anything and everything, which drove her mother to the point of despair. Her daddy, however, was always happy to sit with her and explain anything and everything – especially if the question involved telescopes and planets and stuff like that.

She had asked why the Moon was sometimes very big and sometimes it was only very small. Her daddy had explained it to her very carefully: he said that she must know that the Moon is made of blue cheese and that there are lots and lots of really, really big mice that live there in all those holes that you can see and that they nibble and nibble away at the cheese, really, really fast and the Moon gets smaller and smaller until it’s almost gone but then their tummies are so full up, they have to creep back into their holes to sleep for a while. Then, while they are sleeping, the cheese grows and grows and grows until the Moon is all big and round again, so that when the mice wake up, they’ve got lots and lots of cheese to eat again.

This explanation, however much fun it was to her, did not last for very long, because, as in every small child’s world, everything of interest is always shared with teacher and her teacher had disagreed with her father’s explanation. Eventually Mrs Taylor won the tug-of-war and Amanda told her father, who caved in and told her all about a planet the size of Mars, which had bounced off the Earth a long, long time ago but then the Earth had grabbed it and hung onto it with its gravity and now it spins around us every day and that, depending on where the Sun is at that time, the moon sometimes looks bigger and sometimes looks smaller.

Amanda thought that this version sounded just about as crazy as the one with the mice in but she felt so grown-up to have a grown-up answer and insisted that he must always tell her true things and not fairy stories.

From that moment on their relationship took a subtle change. She would admit that she did not fully understand everything that her father told her but very soon she knew more about the moon and the planets and the solar system than her teacher and the whole school did.

When her 10th birthday was approaching, she could feel that something very special was about to happen; whispered conversations quickly stopped whenever she came into the room and her parents always looked so guilty. The tension was tearing her apart, because she knew that in her heart of hearts there was only one thing that she really wanted but she also knew that what she really, really wanted would be far too much money for a 10-year-old girl’s birthday, so she forced herself to try to think instead of all of the other things her parents might think a 10-year-old would crave . . . but she knew in her heart of hearts that she wanted only one thing.

The days crept past so slowly she could scream but, finally, 3 days before the big day, her father sat her down and said, ‘Amanda, your mum and I want to give you a really special present this year but this is . . . this is so special that we think you have to do something to earn it.’

‘Yes! Yes, daddy! Anything . . . I’ll do anything . . .’

Her daddy smiled. ‘If, on your birthday morning, at 9’oclock precisely, you can name every single one of the Moon’s mares . . . then you will have earned your present.’

She gave her parents a huge hug and rushed up to her room where the task began in earnest.

On her special day she waited until exactly 9’oclock and then ran downstairs and presented herself in front of her daddy’s chair. She stood tall, with her eyes closed and her hands folded tightly behind her back and began: ‘Serpent Sea, Nectar, Fecundity, Serenity, Tranquillity (which is my absolute favourite one, because I think it sounds so nice) and then there’s . . .’

She named each and every one of them and, when she finally opened her eyes, she grinned and her daddy leapt up and gave her the biggest hug of her life. Then he took her by the hand and led her through to his study. There in the centre of the room was the most enormous telescope she had ever seen – except for her daddy’s, of course – with a token piece of birthday wrapping paper tied around it, just for effect.

Amanda stood stock still, trying to take in the enormity of her present . . . but not for long – she flung her arms around them both and sobbed with joy.

‘Did you remember that tonight is a full moon, sweetheart?’ her mummy whispered. ‘Do you think that I can come with you this time to watch you try it out?’

A few weeks before her twelfth birthday she had the very most amazing birthday present ever. Amanda would have longed to have been up on the hill with her telescope but, not only was the moon in its waxing crescent mode but there was also a big family gathering and she knew that she couldn’t do both. Everybody sat glued to the television screen. It went on for hours and hours and most of it was boring, with each of the presenters struggling to out-sensationalise the others but then, suddenly, the room went quiet. Amanda crawled closer and closer to the screen until, when those momentous words were spoken: ‘That’s one small step for man . . .’ her eyes misted over as she screamed out, ‘That’s my daddy!’