A Confession

On Monday night I gave my lecture, 'Travel and Exploration: a new direction?' to the Royal Geographical Society. I really enjoyed it, but with about five hundred people in the audience it was fun in a pulse-quickening kind of way. It is time for a little confession.

Last Friday was a full moon and no ordinary full moon either. It was a perigee full moon, when the moon passes closest to the earth and appears a lot larger than normal. On Friday evening it was due to be the largest full moon that we had seen for 50 years. There were also due to be meteors from the Germinid showers.

I am not generally a hugely superstitious creature, although I do enjoy reading about the historical and cultural associations surrounding sky omens. At the end of last week it was easier for me to see how these connections and beliefs have evolved. The talk was very much in my diary and my mind for the days leading up to it and so if truth be told I did not especially welcome unusual celestial goings-on. I was grateful for once that the weather was atrocious and blotted out the sky. I know, this is a sort of vulgar and egotistical navel-gazing, a rather base and vain belief that the moon and meteors could care less what I was up to of a Monday evening.

As it happened the stage did not open up and swallow me, the audience did not metamorphosise into dragons and scorch me with their flames. They gave me a generous round of applause and headed off to the bar in the Map Room for a nip of something to brace against the elements. Even if the omens did not seem portentous on this occasion I think I will forever have a greater sympathy for the historical figures who read so much into them.

Cats and Hats

Those who have been on a course will know the strange pleasure that I get from connecting seemingly unrelated things through natural navigation, so here, before your eyes I will attempt to connect a cat on a dustbin and a Greek orthodox priest.

The Gooleys have just returned from a week visiting family in the Peloponnese. My brother's house is high in the Greek hills and we found ourselves following the same route down a few times each day on the way to towns, villages or the beach. It was during these trips in the car that I noticed that certain animals and indeed, in the case of one Greek orthodox priest, people appeared with a soothing predictability at certain points on the journey.

There was a corner that I remembered well for the dustbin which invariably had this cat sitting on it, and the turning to the beach was nearly always to be found a few hundred yards after we saw a priest walking by the road. There is no denying that this is an odd way to view a journey to us in the West, but to the traditional Pacific navigators it would have been comforting and familiar. They included among their many methods of finding their way to the next island, the art of 'pookof', noting which sea creatures appeared with dependable regularity in which locations as they approached land. A school of dolphins a few hours south of one island, a couple of turtles a day east of another.

My long-suffering family even had to endure me saying things like, 'Shall we head towards the priest and then turn towards the pookof cat and go for a swim in the sea?' They must be delighted to be home.

Shadow Seeker

For the next six months the sun will always have some south in it when viewed from Britain. It will rise south of east and set south of west until the 20th March 2009. Its shadows must therefore always have some north in them. This picture was taken at 9.35 this morning, by which time the sun is fast approaching south-east and my shadow is well on its way to north-west.

Random fact for the day: sun compasses were still being issued to the military for the first Gulf war in 1991.

Rain Clouds and Wrongwayitis

I've been reading accounts from British light aircraft pilots who have experienced difficulty in orienting themselves when flying in the southern hemisphere. The reason for this 'wrongwayitis' is fairly well understood and stems from the disagreement, usually subconscious, of where we expect to see the sun relative to our travel and where it actually is.

I was a bit shocked this afternoon when returning from Southampton airport to discover that I was experiencing a similar sensation, a feeling of 'wrongwayitis'. I was driving through heavy rain and the signs told me clearly that I was heading the right way, or roughly east along the M27. There were even natural clues confirming it at the roadside in the shape of trees. Rationally I knew that I was heading the right way and yet the feeling of wrongwayitis persisted for several minutes. A casual glance revealed that the sky was indeed brighter to the north and east, when I would have expected it to be brighter in the southwest. This was the only explanation I could come up with for this feeling, the stark contrast between dark rain clouds in the south and west and the lighter sky in the north and east. Were the other drivers on the M27 at that time experiencing this same feeling? I've no idea, but I'd like to know.