Читать книгу How to predict the weather with a cup of coffee: And other techniques for surviving the 9–5 jungle - Matthew Cole - Страница 47

Now you’re ready to mark your dial. Start the whole process in the morning, close to the time you want the dial to be most effective.

Look at the time and position the mirror so that it throws a spot on the ceiling wherever you think best, remembering that you need to be able to see the time easily when lying in bed. Leave space for the hours you’d like to come before and after.

Diehard sundial fans mark a central ‘meridian’ – the line the sun crosses at midday. But that’s way too late. I prefer to make 9 o’clock the centre of things – one side is a lie-in, the other side isn’t. By restricting the range to the vital few hours of the morning your dial can be more accurate, and you don’t need such a big ceiling.

Seventeenth-century sundial obsessives started young. Isaac Newton drew his first ceiling sundial as a boy of 12. And at just 16 the young Christopher Wren drew an elaborate dial on the ceiling of his room at Oxford. Wren’s sundial came a few years before Newton’s, who was 5 at the time.