…to see which way the wind blows.
The British are, of course, traditionally obsessed with the weather. One of my earliest memories is of the barometer in my Gran’s house. It had all sorts of dials and metres on it and reading it generally seemed to involve tapping it a lot and then guessing. Apparently there was some black art whereby measuring the air pressure and knowing whether it was rising or falling enabled you to predict the weather with similar accuracy to the guesswork of the TV weathermen (it was always men back then).
But these days the weather is so much more interesting than it was back then. Now we’re deeply into a cycle of climate change and pretty much anything goes. So these days, you don’t just need a barometer. No what you need is a Weather Station. None of that tedious tapping the mercury and guessing. No, the Weather Station will measure the temperature and atmospheric pressure for you (both indoors and out, thanks to the remote wireless sensor) and will then guess at the weather forecast for you. And if you’re too lazy to get up and look at the readings, you can even shout at it and it will tell you the forecast (albeit in a rather annoying American accent).
I bought mine from Ebay and it arrived yesterday. It’s lots of fun.