It was all going so well and Loan Ranger was enjoying the sound of loan bankers, from London to Austria, being for once unanimously enthusiastic about something. He avoided drawing unnecessary parallels with the eclipse of loan volumes in the first quarter, or indeed saying, "loan-ar eclipse".
“I’m really looking forward to this,” said one official. “It took me a while to go online and order the special glasses, but I have them now and am good to go.”
“Say what?”
“The special glasses you need…”
“I was going to just wear some normal sunglasses…”
But even as he heard himself utter these words, Loan Ranger felt a rising pang of self-opprobrium. He knew straight away that his cavalier attitude had once again led him to commit an eclipse faux pas – the equivalent of wearing jeans on a golf course or playing polo on a bicycle.
“Oh no, you can’t do that!” exclaimed the banker. “Don’t you remember anything about the last eclipse? You mustn’t look at it without the special glasses. Sunglasses don’t work.”
Loan Ranger was transported back to 1999 and suddenly remembered the furore that had gripped the UK and the accompanying hysteria that we were all going to go blind. It must indeed have only been through the sale of 60m special glasses that there hadn’t been a national re-enactment of Day of the Triffids.
As panic set in, Loan Ranger turned to his accomplices Tonto and Silver in desperation. They were just stood there grinning, each sporting a magnificent pair of eclipse shades.
A frantic search began. Where was the furore this time? Why hadn’t he been warned? Who was to blame?
It was all there online – the many, many invocations to take care for the eclipse and not go blind. So where could one get these glasses then?
The sum total of advice amounted to: “Either spend a fortune and well in advance, don’t look at the sun at all, make some kind of pinhole contraption, look through the leaves of trees, or dig around in your attic for the glasses you bought last time.”
To the attic it was! And then Loan Ranger remembered he didn’t have an attic either. Another thing to put on the ‘to do’ list.
Of course, in the event he needn’t have worried. With thick cloud dolloped over London there was little chance of seeing the event at all. He didn’t even know in which direction to look if he wanted to go blind.
Loan Ranger, Tonto and Silver exchanged a collective sigh. Silver relented and consoled Loan Ranger that he could at least have a go of wearing his glasses.
And again he recalled 1999. There was a reason he hadn’t lost his sight that day as well: the UK is the safest country on earth to see an eclipse.
