I tend to spend a lot of my time in the past, poking around in various historical people and places and trying to work out what is and isn’t worth knowing. When I find things that are worth knowing, it also seems they must be worth telling, thus I thought I might start writing about them.

The noon observation was a measurement of the Sun’s elevation at its zenith, taken by sailors in order to calculate their latitude. As points on my historical horizon come into view, I shall endeavour to aim my shaky arm and ill-calibrated sextant at them to make some inaccurate and irrelevant observations. Hopefully, this will be a jolly distraction, even if it doesn’t get me anywhere.

Ideally, I would be making these observations every noon, but that is of course wildly optimistic. Tomorrow, however, I might have something to say about General Gordon.