The BBC Weather Tide Tables is the place to go to find tidal timetables in the UK. It’s especially useful as you can look up to a week ahead.
It’s an accurate free resource so why spend £30 on a Tide Clock?
Tides, as you know, are governed by the moon and a lunar day is 24 hours and 50 minutes. My clock rotates once every 12 hours and 25 minutes, so twice each lunar day. The political timetable is less predictable.
I wondered if Theresa May might be the shortest serving British Prime Minister when she resigns next month. She won’t have the shortest tenure because she has already edged ahead of Anthony Eden, Alec Douglas-Home and another eleven PMs. (George Canning only managed 119 days.)
Meanwhile, because you are bored by politics, let’s take a look at the BP National Portrait Gallery’s 39th exhibition. For me the best portrait was of a brooding, former paratrooper turned sculptor.
Broken Bodies
by Jamie Coreth
© Jamie Coreth
Jamie Coreth gained a BA archaeology and anthropology from Oxford University followed by studies at Florence Academy of Art and the London Atelier of Representational Art. His work has been seen in group exhibitions in London and Italy and won the BP Young Artist Award at the BP Portrait Award in 2016.
The portrait is of the artist’s friend Mark, a sculptor who was formerly a soldier in the Parachute Regiment. Mark sustained a severe injury that ended his time in the army leading to his decision to concentrate on his career as a sculptor. Painted at night under artificial light, Coreth says: ‘He casts his shadow over an old clay figurative sculpture, which appropriately was cracked across the hips and across the heart.’
Robert chose this portrait of the Marquis of Cholmondeley’s children (Alexander, Oliver and Iris) at Houghton.
The title of today’s post is by Lord Byron:
There is a tide in the affairs of women, which, taken at the flood, leads – God knows where. (Don Juan)