Okay here it is... my first attempt at photographing the moon. Not brilliant I know, but at least I stopped the camera shake! I had to go up to the top of the house to take the photo and then the window wouldn't open and it was dark and I tripped over something.... No, no more excuses.

Seeking the Green by Tylluan Penry, published soon by Capall Bann. For more info - watch this space!

So there I was with my new camera last night (a birthday present from one of my daughters) trying to take a photo of the moon. Well, it seemed like a great idea at the time. If any of you heard reports of some silly old bat hanging out of an upstairs window at midnight waving her arms about – that was me. I got my pictures but mostly they looked like UFO’s. In desperation I also photographed a solar light down in the garden – that looked like a UFO too. Better luck tonight.

What is it about the moon that so fascinates us still? I mean I know that it’s a lump of rock, but to me there’s still an air of mystery about it that no moonwalks will ever erase. Interestingly my mother never believed man had landed on the moon – she reckoned it was all a set-up in a back studio in Hollywood. I was amazed years later, once I got the Internet, to discover this is still quite a commonly held belief.

In fact, my mother’s family had rather ambiguous views about the moon. When I was young I was told a family legend about an ancestor who went mad through looking at the moon and thinking about time (yes, I kid you not. They were a strange lot.) Apparently he started thinking along the lines of ‘this is the same moon my father used to look at,’ and then ‘this is the same moon my grandfather used to look at’ and gradually worked his way back through Francis Drake (not an ancestor, but interesting often believed to be a sorcerer by his contemporaries) to the dawn of time, by which time he was frothing at the mouth and had to be taken away.

Was it a true story? Probably not. It was more an allegory, a warning perhaps, that was passed down for generations. Possibly being seen out of doors under a full moon was a sure way of getting yourself talked about among the neighbours. After all, the word Lunatic derives originally from the Latin for Moon.

The moon certainly affects the tides, and according to Professor Zimecki’s report entitled, ‘ The Lunar Cycle: Effects On Human And Animal Behaviour And Physiology’ full moons affect criminal activities and heath, causing an escalation in crime and hospital admissions. Zimecki argues that suicides increase on a new moon, and supports this with reference to hospitals who apparently increase their security according to the lunar cycle. And some prisons report more violent incidents around the full moon.

Is our response to the moon just emotional or is there more to it? Something we cannot control? It’s been hotly debated for years. Some argue it’s because humans are mostly composed of fluid that the moon’s gravity effects us just as it does the sea. Others reckon it’s the fluid in part of the hypothalamus that is affected.

Personally I believe in going by our own observations. Some people may be more dramatically affected than others. I knew a boy whose behaviour changed dramatically on a full moon to the extent where he almost became a different personality, but how to prove it was due to lunar influence? I don’t know. How do we prove anything? We can assemble all the evidence together – but if we don’t want to believe (as in the case of my mother and the moon landing) then we won’t.

Seeking the Green by Tylluan Penry, published soon by Capall Bann. For more info - watch this space!