So is it GMT now, or what?
The clocks went back this weekend. This is a quaint custom which I think was introduced to help farmers during the war. Licensing hours were also introduced as a wartime measure and although these are slowly being eroded, there appears to be no movement on putting clocks one hour forward to announce the arrival of British Summer Time and one hour back, as today, to announce the arrival of British Winter Time.
Personally I’m tremendously grateful for some sort of organised event to announce the official start of winter – you used to be able to tell when winter was upon you by looking at the ‘seasonal’ aisle in the supermarket. BBQs, firelighters and salmonella cures meant that summer was arriving, advent calendars means winter is here and so you had better start eating chocolate now to build up fat reserves to live off when it gets cold.
Now though, with supermarkets battling to get out money and fuck up any sense of a pleasant anticipation of a seasonal event, barely have the Easter eggs vanished than the plastic pumpkins are out.
Thankfully, we can rely on official notification from the water board telling us there is a hosepipe ban to tell us that summer is here, but how about winter? That’s especially true of this year, when the only thing you could say about the summer was that the rain was warmer.
Putting the clocks back adds to the ‘nights are fair drawing in, eh?’ feeling. Meaning it’s dark at four rather than five. This of course means fuck all to me anyhow as at four or five I’m still stuck at the office and look out onto what I swear is an attempt to create a Romanian style housing project – short on charm, heavy on cabbage being used in the construction. It does mean that on the rare occasions I do quit the office early enough to see daylight, I don’t emerge into it blinking and shuffling like a Morlock, but run like hell whooping with joy and spinning like a demented woman in a tampon ad.
Today was rainy and overcast. I didn’t leave the house all day. It was kind of interesting though, to lie prone on the sofa, reading a book and putting off the decision to go for a pee until I really was in quite a lot of pain and watch the light drain out of the sky. Not that there was much light to drain, but with the clouds practically brushing the fucking streetlights, the sky was lit from beneath and showed off a luminescent, orange grey haze.
Bears, I think, have the right idea – set the alarm for spring and dream of your breakfast sporting an orange vest.
Personally I’m tremendously grateful for some sort of organised event to announce the official start of winter – you used to be able to tell when winter was upon you by looking at the ‘seasonal’ aisle in the supermarket. BBQs, firelighters and salmonella cures meant that summer was arriving, advent calendars means winter is here and so you had better start eating chocolate now to build up fat reserves to live off when it gets cold.
Now though, with supermarkets battling to get out money and fuck up any sense of a pleasant anticipation of a seasonal event, barely have the Easter eggs vanished than the plastic pumpkins are out.
Thankfully, we can rely on official notification from the water board telling us there is a hosepipe ban to tell us that summer is here, but how about winter? That’s especially true of this year, when the only thing you could say about the summer was that the rain was warmer.
Putting the clocks back adds to the ‘nights are fair drawing in, eh?’ feeling. Meaning it’s dark at four rather than five. This of course means fuck all to me anyhow as at four or five I’m still stuck at the office and look out onto what I swear is an attempt to create a Romanian style housing project – short on charm, heavy on cabbage being used in the construction. It does mean that on the rare occasions I do quit the office early enough to see daylight, I don’t emerge into it blinking and shuffling like a Morlock, but run like hell whooping with joy and spinning like a demented woman in a tampon ad.
Today was rainy and overcast. I didn’t leave the house all day. It was kind of interesting though, to lie prone on the sofa, reading a book and putting off the decision to go for a pee until I really was in quite a lot of pain and watch the light drain out of the sky. Not that there was much light to drain, but with the clouds practically brushing the fucking streetlights, the sky was lit from beneath and showed off a luminescent, orange grey haze.
Bears, I think, have the right idea – set the alarm for spring and dream of your breakfast sporting an orange vest.
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