Sunday 1 April 2007

Cometh The Hour

You (my lonely single reader) may have noticed that I have been slacking off the blogging a bit of late. This is partly to do with suddenly being overcome with the urge to buy a four-bedroom house on Blythe Hill (more of which later) but also has a lot to do with the annual onset of Ye Olde Britishe Summer Tyme.

One moment I am getting up with the first song of the lark and happily ambling to work with the sun rising beautifully in a red & orange panorama behind Tower Bridge then, at the whim of some (plainly drunk) politicians in 1916, I am once again stumbling to work in the middle of the night.

There seems to be a whole load of BST-justifying blather referencing (a) farmers, (b) the Scottish and (c) Scottish farmers but frankly the sooner we get with Central European Time, the better. Or I could move to Belgium*.

I was also wondering - if you were born in the winter, then lost an hour the next March, then lived your life in the usual way but sadly died before you had the chance to gain it back again, would you be due an hour back in some way? Denial-of-allocated-time-on-earth class action anyone? I shall have another large glass of very good Argentinian Malbec and work on that theory...

* obviously this is not an option

5 comments:

  1. I afraid, my old fruit, that this clock change seems to have mildly addled your brain.

    CET is BST. To whit to woo:

    GMT = 0
    BST = GMT+1
    CET = GMT+1
    CEST = GMT+2 (Central European Summer Time)

    So if we were on the bally continent it would be darker for even longer in the mornings. And it's that that the farmers get cross about these days.

    The argument seems to be different depending on who you ask but basically it is the farmers and the Scottish who want to keep GMT. For most people the system in the Summer is much better because most people now get up in daylight much as they did a few weeks ago. But now miraculously there is a lot more sunshine in the evenings when people like to do things. This would be the case all year round if we moved to CET. The only people who would be disadvantaged are those who go arrive at work at 8am or earlier goes the theory and we are the minority and can be kicked around like the proverbial football. You want to be on the side of the Farmers not against them, they don't like getting up in the dark either.

    And on the subject of wanting your hour back, you may be interested to read about the Calendar riots of 1752, which were about people having been deprived of 11 days when the calendar was altered to catch up with leap years: Calendar Riots

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  2. You see, that's what happens when you start a post meaning to talk about one thing and meander off halfway through (and also Argentinian Malbec...) and anyway, what are these "things" that "people" like to do in the "evenings"? Debauchery, that's all it leads to. Tsk.

    So...

    Viva GMT!

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  3. that's funny, i've had 2 very good (and different) bottles of Argentinian Malbec recently. must be the weather. or a belated attempt to triumph over the imperialist foe in revenge for the theft of the Malvinas through the medium of reasonably-priced full-bodied red wine. /me shrugs

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  4. You also appear to have 2 readers Adrian, that might mean that I can never trust you again!

    Most people use the evenings to consume Argentinian Malbec it seems.

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