I didn’t expect anything different four days later. Here’s the narrow gap, goodness knows where the Sun is there. This was going to be a recurring problem with the Sun this low and the buildings so high.
I’d resigned myself to a winter not bothering. Despite vapid promises to save Christmas we locked down again and everyone fell into a pit of gloom, heavy food and heavier drinking. A few sunny days came and went with no hopeful strolls west, I checked the maps casually throughout on the off-chance of an angle, but otherwise it was all on hold.
Then on 8th January, everything changed.
For all my proximity to the Shard, the revelation came from a colleague in Akron, Ohio. He casually mentioned that there’s a webcam looking north from the Shard. You can see live views north at this link:
https://camera.deckchair.com/the-shard-london-1
Even better, they keep a log of previous shots, taken at 15 minute intervals, including on the hour. So, I’d be able to see where the tip of the shadow fell at midday on any sunny day, from the comfort of my own lazy home, tall buildings be damned. And they had an archive of the photos from the previous month or so! What luxury!
Mulling it, the lack of effort does somewhat detract from the process. I could as easily work it out with trigonometry and equation of time tables and just mark up the map that way. No stories of buildings or roads or burnt down churches, no blocking buses or dashes between streets… that’s not the point. So, pooh to the permanent retreat to the sofa, but a huge bonus for these building-blocked weeks. On we go…
Shard Analemma 