"Don Pearce" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 1 Mar 2006 14:13:47 -0000, "Keith G"
wrote:


Last night we* learnt a few things....

We learned that, if you are stranded in a desert and your GPS gadget is on
the fritz, you can determine Due North by pointing the hour hand of your
watch at the Sun and that bisecting the angle between it and the 12
o'clock
mark will point you Due South**. (Due North is 180 deg the other way....)
Make the necessary allowances for BST &c., naturally....


Well, if you have any sense, while the sun is up, you are hidden out
of the way, not going anywhere and trying to stay cool. Once the sun
sets you have either Polaris or the Southern Cross to show you North
and South. The best use for your watch is to flog to some passing
Bedouin to get him to take you to the nearest hotel.

In this part of the world, we navigate by ant-hills facing south (if it
is absolutely necessary to navigate at all) By day, we prefer to
catch and eat salmon and drink the Absolut. But we do know enough
about survival to never eat any bug or insect from the underneath
of a leaf, and to wear a bell around the neck when walking in deep
forest to warn the bears of one's approach.

Iain