Did you remember to turn your clock back? No? Just get your child to sort it. Or the kelpie. I’m going back to bed. Photo: File.
Feels like we were waiting forever – at least since around 2 am, October 2, 2022 – for daylight saving to end.
I don’t remember voting for it: nor do I remember being asked if I wanted it. It just turned up one day/night, and made its presence so hotly felt, it faded curtains.
Interesting, though, that people seem as divided about it as the year is. Half and half. They use lots of lame excuses about why it’s not a good thing, but it’s obvious what is really wrong.
It’s just not natural.
Like choc tops without the, er, choc top. Lassie without a mineshaft to find a lost child in. A pub menu without a schnitty on it.
I don’t mind new stuff, as long as I’ve had about 100 years to get used to it.
Nor even the old stuff, but it’s those whingers. Especially those parents who reckon they’re the only ones with equally whingy children who won’t go to bed because the sun is still out. What sort of person are you, I ask? Lie to your children, I say. Do what most parents do when the Mr Whippy truck plays music outside their windows. Tell the kids the truck only plays music when it has run out of ice cream.
If your child won’t go down to sleep when it’s still light outside, get yourself another child. Okay, maybe that’s slightly harsh and possibly illegal. Pull the curtains across, I say. Can’t, they reply, daylight saving caused them to disintegrate. Put them up for adoption – the children, no-one wants holey curtains – and get a puppy. Conversation ends.
This is where dogs clearly come into their own. They know it’s almost aways dinner time. It’s not something you’d find on a clock – for younger readers, clocks are those round things you see in museums which tick, tick, tick lots – but don’t normally explode.
For a dog, waddling into the kitchen at 3 am, and seeing a stranger there, even if stranger is a serial killer and armed with huge knife – and the dog is a labrador – it can still mean it’s dinner time. (If that person’s sociopatheticness doesn’t extend to dogs, the knife was probably brought in to cut up dog meat). Any human in any kitchen ever, means it could be dinner time.
There’s nothing wrong with going to bed post-midnight because it seems about dark enough then so you can wake up sometime the next afternoon, full of beans. (Baked ones probably, because your body is so out of whack you had a late supper of breakfast and porridge sandwiches for lunch.)
So stop feeling sorry for yourself and your curtains, and spare a thought for those overnight radio announcers who, even on a good day/night, rarely know what day it is. I guess they don’t have to.
But can you imagine starting work at 2 am and getting all the way to 3 am only to be told it’s actually still 2 am and you have to find another hour of broadcastable material to fill in yet another hour when almost everyone else is asleep anyway except for aforementioned serial killers.
You can almost guarantee that the talent you line up for the radio segment is going to be a little desperate at that hour of the day/night and be either, (a) someone who would almost certainly love to be back in their bed; (b) reading a good book; (c) in bed with someone who has read a good book; (d) someone who has written a really bad book that can only get free publicity for said book at around 3 am when there’s that extra hour to fill – and everyone else is asleep.
If I were the broadcaster, I’d just slip on to repeat that cheery foot-tapper Sad Eyed-Lady of the Lowlands, a 12-plus minute dirge Bob Dylan wrote about his wife – when he was still speaking to her. (I only know it was about his wife because he mentioned this song in another song he wrote about his wife, helpfully called, Sara – which was her name – when it seemed he did love her.)
But yay! We made it. Now I need to get to sleep. Staying awake till 3 am to turn the clock back again wore me out. Or was I supposed to turn it forward? Better sleep on it.
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