So now we’re back to GMT – we’ve snapped back to the right time according to our celestial tilt. Personally, I think it feels good! Adding an hour in summer doesn’t make sense so now we’re back to a welcome normal. This clock change, the paradoxical subtracting of an hour to give us an hour extra in bed in the morning is the ‘good one’!
But here’s how I wasted it.
Most of us wake up on a Sunday mroning with nothing much to do and as our feet swing out of the bed and hit the floor, as the fog of the night’s sleep lifts and as the sense of time ahead of us solidifies we start to think about how we’d like to spend it.
Often those Sunday plans have already been made, and often they rotate around easy and non-urgent activites. Activites which for the most part wouldn’t suffer if we turned up at the wrong time – which is why we do this twice annual clock changing activity at 2 am on a Sunday morning. Late enough on a Saturday evening not to make any difference, and early enough on a Sunday to…likewise make no difference.
But Sundays are those days when time means little and the whole of it can be spent without looking – let alone adjusting – our clocks, and I’m sure it’s not unknown to many of us for having turned up at work an hour out.
To ensure this doesn’t happen I tend to change my clocks on a Saturday evening – early enough that I’m still awake enough to have my faculties working with me, and late enough that it doesn’t interfere with any time dependent events.
So last Saturday night this is what I did. Each year changing the clocks takes less time as an increasing number of my devices do this automatically, so actually when I say “this is what I did” I pretty much mean “I spent a few seconds changing the hour hand on the clock in the lounge.” And having completed the last of my chores for the day I settled behind the screen and binged on Netflix.
Before I knew it I’d reached my bedtime and the lounge clock confirmed it. I’d had my extra hour early and I hadn’t even noticed!
That night my daughters were having trouble. They were both ill and needed parental attention. And the parents needed sleep – but it wasn’t to come until the very early hours. I don’t know how it happened, but my wife was able to wake up the following morning a couple of ours later, happy as a bird and with a spring in her step.
I, on the other hand, was a sleep deprived miserable wretch. And being the shining angel that she is, my wife let me have a lie-in whilst she sorted out the girls who had somehow recovered and were equally cheerful (as their mother) and were springing around the house.
So I slept.
Long and deep, and let the neurons cease fire and recharge in my pounding head. And eventually I woke and made my way downstairs. And as three pairs of hands, feet arms and legs managed to draw me out of the land of nod and into crazy town, I glanced at the clock on the lounge wall. A quarter to eleven.
To be clear: this is the lounge clock which had already been set back an hour.
A quarter to eleven! For a father of 2 young daughters that’s an incredibly long lie-in!
My wife catches my eye on the clock. “Don’t worry”, she says, “It’s really quarter to twelve” …
Paul
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