There’d never been a spring like spring 2020. There was plague in the air and not a cloud in the sky. I’d grown two beards and lost two kilos. London was quiet. Everyone was going a bit stir crazy.
But at least by the summer solstice we were allowed to visit people’s gardens. We went hog wild with a friend on the Saturday night before she drifted off in daylight and a daze. I woke about midday on the 21st. The unflinching catatonia beside me made it clear I’d have to make my own fun, so I walked down to the Shard and took a photo of the Sun through its pincer-like tip.
I was two minutes late thanks to cloud, a closed stairwell and hungover planning, but it’s a start.
I’d thought about taking this photo for a while, and all the others it would lead to. I’d never got round to it for many reasons, mainly that it’d always been miles away. But that winter in the last gasps of normality I’d moved east and it was now a short walk at weekends, and then come March like most other people I was at home all the time. No excuses.
I’d wanted to start on the equinox on 20th March, but everyone had wanted to do something on 20th March, so I felt in good company not doing anything but staying in and getting trashed.
But still, the 21st June was the first day of summer and the Shard’s shadow was as short as it would ever be, so it’s as good a place to start as any. As it turns out, at 1pm on June 21st the shadow of the tip of the Shard falls just south of the north pavement of Duke Street Hill, on a pedestrian crossing just outside an entrance to London Bridge tube station. If you stand there and look up, making sure the cars have stopped of course, the two prongs frame the Sun pretty neatly.
Sadly you can’t see this here because my photos were rubbish, as well as being two minutes late, so you’ll have to trust me, or head there next year. There was a fleeting glimpse of a disc between the clouds, honest.
Shard Analemma 