Time

This weekend was move the clocks weekend. Well actually, not so much moving the clocks but moving the time on the clocks. Isn't that just ridiculous. This time of year we loose an hour. One instant it's 01:00 in the morning and the next it's 02:00. Where did that hour go? Why did that hour go? These are important questions - For goodness sake that's a whole hour of sleep I lost just then. It wouldn't matter so much except that for me that's actually about 25% of my sleep for a day, on a good day maybe 33%.

I don't really see what relevance this lose an hour here, gain an hour there has any longer. Does it really make any difference to people. Do even the farmers care nowadays? I know that this morning, on the way to work, the streets were deserted - and cynical me thought that perhaps there is a whole population out there that did not remember to move their clocks. They managed to get through Sunday without noticing and woke up on Monday a whole hour later than they should have done.

Can you imagine the scene? Rouses from bed, switches on radio and half hears the time as 08:37. Goes into kitchen, switches on television. Notices, in an absent way that it's the wrong program. Looks at clock in bottom of screen. Not quite what was expected. Looks again more carefully. Goes pale, drops egg down front of shirt. Rushes upstairs puts on clean shirt but buttons it up one button out of sync. Dashes down stairs, switches off the cat and puts the television outside for the day. Runs down road to catch bus. Waits an age and swears a lot. Bus not running to time. Why? Because this is the bus driver and so should have been at the depot over an hour ago to collect bus to arrive at this stop for 08:45.

And so it goes on, a million micro catastrophes and maybe some larger ones, all because we want to play with time. You know what? In engineering we have a saying "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!" I think that applies to our amateur efforts to manipulate time too.