If you look closely you can see that they are all interconnected, symbolic of a never-ending circle in which it is simply impossible for the dog to catch the rabbit.

In the fairy tale the painting represents the here and now. The book is actually divided into five sections, through which the key character, the muse, leads us.

I started by looking at what others had done before me. You see, over the years there have been attempts by many different people to reconstruct the chariot.

I took lots of photographs and had planned to write a treatise on how it worked, but I quickly got bored with that idea and wrote a scientific fairy tale instead.

In practical terms the South Pointing Chariot was a simple direction finder. It could have been made to point in any direction - north, south, east or west.

Having designed and built several clocks during my career it suddenly occurred to me that when you look at the face of a clock both hands have the same center.

Practical! On Wednesday afternoons I could be practically anything. What's up?