Stepping back in time
There are various periods during the year that I dislike.
Most of those are centred around the “feasts” of Halloween and Christmas, with a drop of Easter thrown in for luck. This is nothing to do with my religious attitudes, but merely a hatred of the commercialism and the forced jollity that accompanies them.
There is one day of the year that does get my goat – the day the clocks go back.
I tend to live my life using natural rhythms – my body clock and the natural cycle of day and night. However when the clocks go back there is that psychological thing that I have to switch the lights on at half four instead of half five, or whatever. I hate dark evenings. I’m a sunshine type of chap [to match my normal sunny disposition] and the idea of seeing black windows with no light outside just doesn’t appeal. I just fucking hate winter and darkness and rain and wind and all that shit and they all seem to come as a package with the clock-shift just being a reminder that it’s all ahead of me.
The only shining beacon of hope is that the shortest day is only a few weeks off, but I don’t like to wish my life away.
The other aspect is all the fiddling around with clocks.
Fortunately these days, clock fall into three main categories – real clocks with hands, digital yokes and those that apparently have a mind of their own such is computers, my television and strangely enough, my central heating. The last group I just ignore as they set themselves. The middle group aren’t too bad as it’s usually a case of pushing the “-” button and the hour goes back.
It’s the first group that can be tedious. Anyone who knows anything about real clocks is that you should never wind them back; always forward. So that means going around the clocks and winding the minute hand around eleven times and I invariably knock the hour hand in the process and knock it out of kilter.
Lastly there is my watch which sort of falls in between the first two categories. It is digital, but it has an analogue display. And the analogue display is electronic so I can’t just wind the hands back as you could with an old watch. To make things easier [*sarcasm*] there are multiple functions on the watch that I never use and only four buttons. So I need the instruction manual to change the fucking thing.
There are three A4 sheets of tiny print that I have to wade through. Press button B until the watch display hour and seconds and then press button C seven times until the display flashes and then press button D to move the hands. You know the type of thing?
Anyhows, I found the instructions [I have ’em in a PDF file on my laptop] and set to work. Setting the digital display was easy enough. It only took me a couple of minutes to work that out. Setting the analogue was slightly different. I had to wind forward as it wouldn’t wind back. And it only winds forward in 20 second increments. There’s a lot of 20 seconds in 11 hours [33 I presume?]. So I kept winding it forward and each time I overshot the mark and had to go around again. Fuck! It took over twenty minutes but I finally got it right. My watch now tells the correct time.
They tell us that we get an extra hour today. They don’t tell us that we’ll spend most of that hour fucking around with clocks and watches.
I think they are all done now. Apart from the oven and the microwave, that is.
And the car.
I always forget to do the car.
ugg the car! it’s gotten so frustrating trying to set that one we just leave it on standard time and ignore it in spring time. To change it you need to fiddle with the shifter thing that also does trip set (who even uses that or needs to) odometer per tank fuel thing, a timer (??really??) then the clock fiddle. I’m down to 6 clocks in the house and since the fire, no watches to do. Think we’ll keep it at that. Happy lost hour to fiddling everyone (gain an hour my arse).
Don’t worry – I’ll remember to do the car sometime around February. Who relies on a car clock anyway?
Real clocks are simple, just stop them at 9 at night and restart them at 9 in the morning, the rest of the bloody things in this house can sort themselves out.
Have you ever tried removing the battery from a hermetically sealed watch?
“I just fucking hate winter and darkness and rain and wind and all that shit and they all seem to come as a package with the clock-shift just being a reminder that it’s all ahead of me.”
This year I have actually sent out emails which inform the reader that they need expect no sense out of me until the end of March…maybe April. Last winter’s SAD was…..epic…nay of biblical proportions and had me taking Amytrips-down-the-stairs well into May. Since coming off it I have started taking 5htp so maybe this winter won’t be as bad….maybe.
Well, I don’t expect sense out of you any time of the year so that’s fine.
Amy-trips are grand lads though. Got me through many a winter.
Amy-trips? I don’t have those in my self-penned lexicon of fun drugs. I take it you’re not talking about poppers?
I’m another SAD bastard. I fucking hate winter, too. I also always celebrate the winter solstice, because from that point it starts getting lighter. Here in Greece, we obviously have less difference in daylight between summer and winter, but it’s still quite dramatic. It’s kind of strange when you’re near the equator like in Thailand, because you get more or less twelve hours of light and twelve of dark, all year round. No changing clocks, either.
One relief about being here is that although it gets cold in winter (though not as cold as where you are), we get lots of gloriously sunny days. It often makes it difficult to know what to wear, because when you’re in the direct sun, it’s really fucking hot, but as soon as you move into the shade, it’s really fucking cold. So you tend to alternate between sweating and shivering.
And yes, the clocks thing is a real pain. I never bother with the clock in my vehicle, and the digital alarm clocks we have either side of the bed have such an arcane system that I leave those to my wife to do. The rest of them – wall clocks, microwave, oven etc are fairly easy. As for my watch, it’s auto-recharge battery, but analogue, and I just wind it back an hour. I’ve been doing it for the 20 years I’ve had it, and it still seems ok.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amitriptyline
one of the 3bicycle antidepressants . Comes with the fun side effects of being quite a good painkiller and making everything taste like my mother’s cooking. I find it also fucks with my eyesight to the extent I can’t read the car dashboard …so nothing worrying there then. More worrying is it’s ability to kill the libido and means I need to up my dosis of Vitamin N just to even think about that whole sex thing (Yes Mr.Anti-Smoker reading, despite what the packs would have you believe, nicotine is an aphrodisiac and mighty pencil-leader).
Aha! No, not familiar with those. I’ve never been much of a one for prescription medicines, as they don’t usually hit the spot, unless you neck the whole pack. I thought for a moment there that you were talking about amyl nitrate (poppers, popular with the gay community), which are an instant pick-me-up-and-up-and-up. And also great if you have a compliant female in bed with you.
relax for fuck sake, sure what else would you be doing
According to an article I recently read about the real reason for changing to clocks (no, it’s not Benjamin Franklin, the railroads or farmers) we can thank Germany, England, the USA and WWI for it.
First, Germany suggested it then England enacted it (1916) then the US also enacted it (early 1918) all for the sake of saving fuel. This was mainly to save fuel while fighting against our (WWI) enemies. After WWI it was still kept just for the alleged saving of fuel. Don’t ask me how they figured it was save anything at all.
Now me, I couldn’t care all that much after spending years working 18 hour days (poking holes in the ocean onboard a submarine) and all different types of shifts (as in 1st, 2nd and 3rd). I can’t say I like it getting dark at 3:30 PM much but I can live with it. On the other hand the wife absolutely hates it. Loses an hour of sleep in the Spring which takes her weeks to get over and then gains an hour in the Fall which means the cats jump all over her at 4:30 in the morning instead of 5:30 wanting their breakfasts.
And like yourself, we have many clocks–all three types.
I agree with your post 110%. Apparently, in the Northern Hemisphere November is the month of the most recorded suicides BUT there is a plus 7% spike over the week following the clocks going back. Like you I really loathe this weekend and November. As far as I can comrehend it’s got nothing at all going for it! December is another matter because as you say the shortest day arrives, then there is Christmas and the New Year, well celebrated chez moi and then it’s a new year with all the potential for positive things!
“I just fucking hate winter and darkness and rain and wind and all that shit.” Me too. Which is why I’m spending Christmas and New Year in Australia this year. While I can.
Did you know that november is a busy month for opticians, everybody thinks they are going blind,apparently 60 year olds require ten times more light than a six year old too see
Humans i,m speaking about
I went last month cos night driving keeps getting harder…but this is Norfolk and we’re so far into the north sea sometimes we get the Polar Lights.
Ha. Here just the one battery powered clock with hands that I leave on “British Summer Time” all year round. The komputaa’s clock is centered currently on Denver if memory serves before that it was some place in Indonesia. So literally nothing to change.
There are no devices with hidden clocks inside them as far as I know and that includes so termed smart phones. There are no phones whatsoever at all in the house, well there is an ancient pair of motorola something but they have their battery’s out so are simply ornaments all be it ornamenting the inside of a drawer.
So the sun comes up the sun goes down days and nights change their lengths and the seasons roll, happy Samhain old friend.
We need the clocks going back up here over the border as it saves kiddies getting mown down in the pitch black as they are trying to go to school, they had an experiment in the UK in 1971/2 and the kiddies were getting massacred (despite Lollypop Men) they soon changed it back.
That clock changing is a pain in the arse, all my fucking clocks are about 9ft up the fucking wall and I risk my life standing on chairs and couches wobbling about on my heels trying not to topple backwards and cracking my skull on a table and my thick glass ashtrays.
Saying that I work backshift, so its not the nicest time of the year to have a sky as black as tar at 5pm.
Last year I didn’t bother and all the clocks were still on BST until October and I just reminded my brain they were all wrong…