A World of My Own

The clocks went back last night... At least they did (or were meant to) if you live in the UK. We went back to dear old Greenwich Mean Time after being on British Summer Time since the end of March. Does it strike anyone else as odd that Greenwich Mean Time, by which all things time related are measured, is only in operation in the UK for five short months in any given year? Come to think of it, does it strike anyone else as odd that we still maintain daylight saving in the twenty-first century? No? Just me, then.

I can’t help thinking we could save ourselves, and, in particular all families with small children at least two weeks of aggravation a year re-setting our circadian rhythms and, in particular, our babies’ circadian rhythms, if we just gave the whole thing up as a bad job. There is no harvest remaining to gather in, and, if there were, that’s what combine harvester and floodlights are for.

My point, though, is that I now live in such a refined world all of my own, and of my husband’s, of course, ruled only by ourselves and our own desires, that we actually put our clocks back after we’d finished entertaining ourselves with a bit of therapeutic shopping yesterday.

The dudes in Austin Reed (don’t bother, you won’t get served) were so rubbish last week that we drove down to Ashford outlet centre yesterday morning on a whim, and I ended up buying three shirts in Ralph Lauren for the price of one in the aforementioned. Then Dan decided he needed something that he could only get at BlueWater, and, of course, it was lunchtime by then.

Anyway, we needed to get some work done, so, when we got home around three o’clock we decided to put the clocks back a  little ahead of time and extend the afternoon by an hour, so that we could finish what needed to get finished.

How many people do you know who can live their lives by their own clock?

We don’t watch tv, we didn’t have any dinner reservations, we weren’t meeting anyone, we didn’t have children to get to bed, or get up for in the morning, and our lives are totally, and completely our own, so, the bottom line was that, yesterday we took an extra hour in the day instead of waiting for all the clocks to automatically reset over night.

The husband and I set our ancient manual watches by hand at about three o’clock yesterday afternoon and began Greenwich Mean Time a little ahead of the rest of you. We travelled through time, and it was lovely.

I like the world that I live in. It’s perfectly fine by me that everyone has now backed up, and that we’re all back in synch, but how cool is it that I was able to step off without upsetting myself and without anyone else noticing? What a luxury!