Time, gentlemen please!
Last weekend we went on a guided visit in Villena. The title was something like Gnomones y saetillas , and, after I’d booked it, I began to wonder whether I had made a big mistake. A gnomon is the part of a sundial that casts the shadow; the saetillas are the little grooves or lines which turn that shadow into a reading of the time. It sounded dangerously technical. In fact, it turned out to be really interesting because they led us into a much bigger story about time, its measurement and its ownership. The visit began, as so much of old European life does, with the Church. Before clocks were common, the bells of the church were how people measured time. They rang for the various services and masses: the daily offices of prayer — Matins and Lauds, traditionally during the night or early morning, Prime, Terce, Sext and None through the working day, then Vespers in the evening and Compline before sleep. They also announced Mass, funerals, feasts, emergencies and, no doubt, the occasional...