Unveiling

Here it is, then, the Denis N Memorial Sundial, formally unveiled yesterday at a nice wine-and-nibbles "do" laid on by Mum in the garden. Den was toasted with Champagne and Diamond said a few words about what Den would have thought of it and probably said... ("Shoot ooop, ya blooody silly woman!" and so on).

Diamond suggested that I was only making a fuss of her because she hadn't brought Rags along (there is this outrageous suggestion that I am not the best hostess where Rags is concerned).

Our heatwave continues and we get buzzed off with Dad's No 2 blade (4mm) after breakfast. This makes Haggis's neck, back, flanks and rump look like they are covered with white felt, so dense is his coat. I get a finish which is just as smooth but silkier and grey/silver looking where my coat is nothing like so dense. We will both be all the cooler for that.

So hot is it, that Dad wakes early and heads for the allotment at 06:30 for some digging before it heats up. The soil is dry as dust on top and only mildly darker and crumby at spade-depth. Dad is not alone - quite a few allotmenteers are up and about at that time (and we later find John had been at his since 05:45. We are told it is the driest hottest first-half-of-year for 80 years down here in the SE and that is even with the cold and wet which is now just a distant memory from ?? April.

Hot dogs

Deefski

Timey Wimey

No, don't worry - we're not getting all Doctor Who on you. Remember, though that we used to have the Denis N Memorial bay tree in the garden, but it was blocking out the light, so Diamond's John and his trusty chain-saw reduced it to the Denis N Memorial Stump (pictured), onto the top of which will be attached the Denis N Memorial Sundial (picture soon). Well, that's now arrived and Mum and Dad, not satisfied with any old sundial, went for a "proper" one.

They had no idea what this would entail, but chose a shiny brass one and filled in all the details on the form, this just for the design proofs. They had to give latitude and longitude and there is a place for some bigger-script words (we chose "For Denis") and another for a suitable quote or, for example, biblical text. Mum chose "The garden is a lovesome thing, God wot" from a favourite poem.

The dial has now arrived and the setting up is quite a pallaver, especially as John's chain saw cut was not... um.... how shall we put it..... exactly horizontal. The disc of the dial has to sit exactly horizontal (spirit level job) so that meant a bed of putty with suitable sized stones embedded. It then has to be exactly aligned to the meridian.

Amazingly (we learned), the sun's movements relative to earth are not exactly regular - the 24 hours is only an average - in fact the apparent position of the sun at each hour varies by +15 to -15 minutes depending on month (14.20 minutes "slow" by a sundial on 12th Feb, 16.23 mins fast on 3rd November, almost correct on 16th April, 14th June, 2nd Sept and 25th Dec) I kid you not - it's called the "Equation of Time". Neither the sundial nor the clock are "wrong", they are just measuring different versions of time.

The need for latitude (we are 51 degrees, 20 minutes North) is so that the "finger" of the dial (called a "gnomon) can point exactly at the North Star.

And then, of course, there's the fact that the dial is calculated and configured to GMT, so for all the Summer it's an hour wrong.

And then Mum decided she didn't like it just perched on the stump, but would prefer it to have some kind of "table" on which to sit, so a suitable flagstone was bought, the thing dismantled, and the re-assembled with the flag twixt stump and brass.

That's all human stuff - I'm only interested in Breakfast Time, Dinner Time, walk time and bed time

Deefer