Today the Clocks went back!!
What an absolute farce. I now don’t quite know what the hell the time is. Every time I look at a clock I have to ask myself if it has automatically updated itself or not. Some do and some don’t. I have to go around in the same muddled state that the country was in when we went decimal. Some measurements are in old and some new – some in pounds and ounces and some in kilos, some in old pounds shillings and pence and some in newfangled pence. So what is the time in real time? Did we go forward or back? Do I take an hour off or do I add it on? And how does that now line up with other countries?
Supposedly I got an hour extra sleep. Not that I noticed. I woke up and checked the clock and my mind was instantly doing calculations and asking questions that brought it straight out of my pleasant dreamy state into stark uncertainty. Do I get up? Is it early or late? How can I be sure? Has this clock automatically updated or not? What is the real time?
Of course, once more they have changed the clocks at the beginning of half term so that the benefits of that extra hour will have worn off by the time school comes around. Instead of all those kids, parents and teachers having an extra hour in bed to make them feel cheery at the beginning of a new week, by the time the school rat-run comes about they will all have adjusted and will receive no benefit.
Why do we do this to our body clock? It is nuts!
Somewhere in the middle of our heads our little pineal gland is happily plodding along, drowsily pumping out its melatonin at the right times to makes us sleepy or awake, then – what the fuck??? It’s blown right out of the water. Everything is an hour different. We’re no longer in tune with the daylight or our body rhythms – all of those lackadaisical routines are blown to bits. We’re fighting our natural cycle to do things at the wrong time. Our internal chemistry is disrupted. Our poor pineal gland, which doesn’t have the benefit of logic and knows nothing about the poor Scottish farmers, has no understanding of how dark it gets in winter in the Highlands, or all those poor cattle who need feeding in the gloaming, is suddenly thrown into complete confusion.
It will recover. But it takes time. Until then we will function at less than optimum.
Jet lag is an unfortunate downside of travel. We don’t like it and would rather it didn’t happen but we have to put up with the crap way it makes us feel, and operating below par for a few days, because we want to see the wonders of the world. But to put ourselves through all this confusion and biological disruption when we have no real need seems daft.
I have never understood the argument. I know that in winter the daylight hours in the Northern regions is limited and it is dark in the morning and farmers need as much daylight as they can get. But altering the bloody clocks doesn’t give them any extra hours of light and the flaming cows can’t tell the time. It doesn’t matter to them what bloody o’clock you call it. Their biology doesn’t alter.
Then there are the schools – we don’t want little Hamish and Flora going to school in the dark – so why don’t we simply start Scottish schools an hour later instead of buggering up everyone’s biological clocks in the whole sodding UK?
I hate it. When these clocks change that is the start of that psychological misery – winter is on its way. We are now rapidly heading for the gloom and the cold, dank, dreary days of winter. The warmth is over. It’s depressing. I could do without it being dramatically spelt out.
Then to add fuel to the flames, next spring, when the days are drawing out, the weather is picking up, warmth and brightness is returning to the land, and everything is renewing, green and full of hope, the bloody government steals a sodding hour off you in the middle of the night and throws a spanner in the works!
So isn’t it time (whatever flaming hour it might be?) to put a stop to this stupidity and leave the bloody clocks alone?