Dear Robbie,  Following your call for direct witnesses, I can certify
that there was a total solar eclipse last Wednesday.  By going to a
remote small village 100 km north of Paris (exactly 20 km north of
Beauvais), I was lucky enough to avoid most of the traffic jam (it
took many people 4 hours to cover that distance - both ways).

The morning drizzle and the clouds were polite enough to part and
let us look very indiscreetly at the marriage of the sun and the moon
(with Venus as witness, slightly aside).

I shall not repeat what others have said very well here (strange light
without colors, silence, cold, diamond crown around the obliterated
sun, etc.).  There is indeed a _huge_ difference between being on the
line of totality, or being at 99%, as in Paris, where many people were
disappointed ...

A few curiosities : It was possible to see the eclipse inside the
house, projected on the floor or on carpets, thanks to many small holes
in the closed shutters of several rooms.  (Claus Kucher made in Austria
good photographs with this system).

 [ You experienced the "camera obscura", wherein you were inside the
 [ camera, and with multiple pin-hole lenses!  -- Robbie

The electrical lighting of the village was automatically switched on
during the total eclipse (and same in many cities, I was told).  The
presence of many clouds reflecting the light prevented the eclipse from
being very dark (as in Cornwall, it seems), but the light was really
ghostly.  A bat -- Yes, a bat! -- crossed our field of vision in the
garden during the totality, which added to the strangeness of the event...

And last but not the least : as soon as the sun reappeared, the light,
the colours and the temperature rose very rapidly, especially because
nobody looked any more at the newly married sun and moon, but instead
everybody (about 40 people) went to the very good "buffet" to eat and
drink, and the temperature certainly rose higher than before.

Cheers !

Philippe Rouille  (Paris, France)
http://www.cnam.fr/museum/musica_mecanica/

P.S. I was lucky enough in 1983 to look at a long solar eclipse in
Java, more than 5 minutes.  It was quite different, and, because of the
humidity of huge recent rainfalls, it looked more like a gigantic
multicolored sunset, 360 degrees around the horizon ... Unforgettable !
Next total eclipse in France : year 2081.  I shall tell you then what it
looked like.