INSIDE THE SKY AT NIGHT

In June, The Sky at Night celebrated 350 years of the Royal Observatory Greenwich. George Dransfield talks time and how the clock rules her own astronomy

- George Dransfield

I used to describe myself as 'chronically late'. Having grown up in Uruguay, this was simply the norm. Timings there were as much a suggestion as red traffic lights were: open to personal interpretation. When I moved to the UK, I kept this habit up, putting my tardiness down to a cultural quirk until, in September 2016, a guy named Ian nearly gave up on me when I was 45 minutes late for a date. Reader, I married him - but only after a painstaking rebrand to become 'anxiously early'. Who knew timekeeping was so important?

Well, Maria Belville, for one. In June's episode of The Sky at Night, we celebrated 350 years of the Royal Observatory Greenwich, and something I learned from the programme team's dinner-party discussions was that time used to be something you could buy and sell. Someone would – as a job - go to the Royal Observatory, get the time, and then visit local businesses and sell them that time. Maria Belville inherited this role from her husband in 1856 and then bequeathed it to her daughter 36 years later. I find this both industrious and bonkers in equal measure. Good timing will have mattered a lot in that family.