Sunday 21 October 2007

CUCKOO TIME

Next weekend the clocks will be put back one hour and we shall return to the long dark winter evenings with their accompanying epidemic of Seasonal Affective Disorder and upsurge of traffic accidents. As usual, we benighted islanders will be out of step with our European neighbours. Grudgingly, we shall go through the twice-yearly tedious performance of adjusting umpteen clocks, watches, and household devices.

Before the proliferation of technology, the time change used to involve maybe a couple of household clocks and a few personal watches. Not any more! At the last count, over two dozen gadgets had to be adjusted in the Burrow – an irritating and unnecessary procedure. Multiply this by the millions of items needing attention in homes and businesses throughout the land, and the wasteful economic impact of this unnecessary biannual rigmarole becomes obvious. Yet, surprisingly, there seems to be no strong demand to scrap it.

During World War Two, summer time was retained throughout the winter and the clocks were moved forward another hour, to “double summer time”, in the summer. If this was in the national interest then, it should be the practice now if it is deemed necessary to change the clocks at all, or else we should stick to summer time throughout the year.

When Anticant was growing up during the War, his family lived next door to an elderly lady who refused to conform to the clock-changing routine because, she said, it upset the birds, who didn’t perform their dawn chorus at what she considered to be the appropriate hour. So she kept her clocks an hour behind everyone else’s. A friend of ours said she lived by ‘Cuckoo Time’.

Here at the Burrow, Cuckoo Time seems a jolly good idea – except that we would prefer to keep our clocks one hour ahead of everyone else.

Joking apart, what do others think of this clock-changing business?

36 comments:

Merkin said...

BST works to negatively affect people in Scotland while benefitting the Home Counties.

anticant said...

How negatively? A handful of farmers in the far north?

Anyway, Scotland is heading towards independence, and can set its own time if it wishes.

Quite apart from the Scottish mafia now running GB inc. What we need is an English national parliament....I nominate the Beadle as candidate for Burrowville.

Merkin said...

No, not the farmers - the children who have a more dangerous journey to school.
I remember as a youngster being given fluorescent armbands to wear when going to school because the number of accidents Up North was much greater than Down South due to the clock change.

anticant said...

Well, start school an hour later, for goodness' sake!

Clock time is a man-made concept and should be used sensibly. We don't have to be ruled by unimaginative inflexibility.

Merkin said...

Should a six year old have been able to argue with your impeccable logic the World might have been a different place.

Bodwyn Wook said...

I keep the clocks around here on GMT and CST year-round -- and, in the summer, tell the town-bastards when it comes up that /I/ am coming in 'an hour early just for your convenience...so I damn' well expect effing results & things to go MY way -- /quid pro quo/'.

THIS Of course fetches the devils evey time, as no one (but none!) knows /qpq/ from Adam's off ox! These Mankatoans ARE a load of simpletons & puddleducks....

Merkin said...

Way to go, Emmett.

Anonymous said...

The only good thing about changing the clocks at this time of year is that it means I look forward to changing it forward again. Which is like taking your coat off indoors so that you feel the benefit when you go outside again. I think.

Anonymous said...

Any time is pink gin time.

Bodwyn Wook said...

I'D Rather pour BEER!

"All-American" Wook!

zola a social thing said...

Clocks should chime more like they once did.
For example to ring those beels at one o'clock was useless ( the asbo lot just stayed in the pub over lunchtime saying they did not hear the ring at one)
Change then to Euro chimes @ 13.00 and military style.
No excuse there to be late for work.

Shit I did that without any mention of capitalism.
Pretty good eh?
dong, dong, dong, dong, dong, dong, dong, dong, dong, dong, dong, dong, dong ( and one extra for Anticant who is always a bit slow on the new bells a ringing) DONG.

anticant said...

a bit slow? He's pulling the damn ropes!

Bodwyn Wook said...

HERE, Here...!

YESTERDAY (/a propos/ of nothing!), me & SWMBO -- it being her birthday -- went hieing off South to Hither Iowa & the ghastly little trans-border casino, 'Diamond Joe's', in the ghastly little trans-border casino-town, Northwood, on Interstate 35 & just across the MN state-line. Sin, 'twould seem, is a scant fifty miles away from us pre-retirees in our old former convent. Anyhow -- apart from bingo, Grandpa is /not/ a sporting man -- I rode seven dollars on up to 19 or so on a computerised sort of slot-machine, and back on down to my 'nut', which I cashed out. I then found SWMBO, who had won four hundred dollars for herself in a penny chance on some gag or other: 'Many Happy Returns!' said I, in my best 50-shilling tones, and off we went, to inspect the wheel....

THIS Was my notion, as at the advanced age of fifty-eight, Grandpa has never (!) played roulette. Now his old Dad did, in naughty schoolboy-outings to Dieppe or Le Toquet, or someplace, in the 'Thirties. And -- as I had /never/ said to SWMBO, for it never came up before -- 17 was Pop's lucky number....

LO & Behold, SWMBO put a counter on 17 -- and I, not to be outdone, put down five dollars. I said to the young woman tending the pitch that I was now just going to 'see the gerbil home....' And, by God, I did win 36 to one!

(Greed being greed, I /did/ try another fiver, washed & got screwed -- and we went home sniggering and clutching our six hundreds between us [less gratuities!] I expect that for between twenty dollars for gas, forty for a pretty-average sort of buffet, and seven for a long ounce of gin, neat & no ice, and ten on the table, and twenty-one dollars tipping (my part of it all), one may as well say we spent a hundred on this jollity. I don't suppose I'll go back soon.... It was Tanqueray, to be sure, but Iowa has some silly statutory animadversion to /neat/ beverages & I was obliged to fish out the ice with my finger-ends. Out from a plastic cup & NOT the seven-ounce highball glass I'd specified, moreover. /Not/ a class-act to be sure, to be sure!)

zola a social thing said...

Is Emmett ready to be de-classified we ask.
May the Emmett return to that time zone of normality?

Bodwyn Wook said...

ZOLA, As my old Dad said: 'Normality is its own reward....' Of course, it is /penalty/ he meant, as was evinced by his long drawling of 're...ward'; and, loads of chaps DO give every evidence that /this/ is 'The Secret'. And, a well-kept one it is, eh?

ANYONE Been having a look into Macaulay, lately?

zola a social thing said...

Not ready yet quite clearly.

My dad was never old. He just died.

zola a social thing said...

History passes that way.
Quite boring really.
But blogs help pass away time.

Anonymous said...

Anticant will never be old. He says that you're as young as the person you feel....

Bodwyn Wook said...

...up the Trovato!

zola a social thing said...

ding dong
merrily on high

Anonymous said...

No ding donging, or dong dinging, in the Burrow!

By Order

zola a social thing said...

on earth the bleeps are beeping
ding dong
dig-digi
all the same to me
Just get yer arse to work on time.

Anonymous said...

Burrow time is cuckoo time.

By Order

zola a social thing said...

Late again you are with yer daily post.
Ding Dong.

zola a social thing said...

Ding ding ding ding ding , ding ding ding ding
DING DING DING DING
Diggi-Diggi-Diggi ding dong
Get back to work.

Bodwyn Wook said...

Ring-ding-a-ling,
Ring-ding-a-ling,
Bang whanger, too,
Ring-ding-a-ling,
Wang banger, too
Wang-banger do....
Do, do, dooo,
Do whomever you do,
WHATEVER, too,
Who, who, whooo....
DO?

{I Say, can't someone get Julie Andrews to have a look at singing all this -- for the Xmas Rag & New Year's Drag?)

zola a social thing said...

Just imagine Julie Andrews and the frills-are-alive with the ding-dongs of Antidotes.
Tick-tock............ eyes.
Nice tits too.
Tick-tock
Left or right.......
All together now all together now.

Anonymous said...

I go to the hills when my heart is lonely
I know I will hear what I've heard before
My heart will be blessed with the sound of music
And I'll sing once more

Anonymous said...

Welcome back, dear Miss Lavenderblue. I have springcleaned your Studio while you have been away. The Beadle has brought you fresh flowers, and Wooffie is wearing his best pearls waiting to sit for his portrait.

Anonymous said...

Why, Thank You, mrs malaprop.
I am so happy to be back in Cloud Cuckoo Land....with the very best of you xx

zola a social thing said...

The clocks have changed.

zola a social thing said...

The clocks have changed.

zola a social thing said...

But the alarm bells remain a'ringin

Bodwyn Wook said...

Tiddly-widdly-woo,
Fornicate & scr-w,
Mrs Tittlemouse!

S/Mr Jackson

Anonymous said...

None of THAT in the Burrow if you please, Mrs Tittlemouse & Mr Emmett!

By Order

Anonymous said...

Now, now, Emmett, if you drag me into this I shall spill the beans about your "Frisky Ferret Nights" at Wook's Nook.