Good morning to you all.<\/p>\n
Some\/many of you will remember that one of my \u201cpet peeves\u201d is the lunacy which we insist on going through twice a year when we change our clocks in the interest of saving daylight. The whole concept is absurd, of course, based on the premise that changing the hands on the face of the clock somehow affects the hours of daylight which we have available to us.<\/p>\n
![\"Clock](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/clock_face.jpg?resize=200%2C340\" "\\"Clock")
The illusion that this actually achieves something is prompting some in the \u201cestablishment\u201d (whoever they are) to suggest that we should adopt double-daylight savings time in the summer and \u201crevert\u201d to \u201cordinary\u201d daylight savings time the rest of the year. Twice as much daylight as ever before!<\/p>\n
I do have to confess that I do enjoy the late, light evenings when we can sit on the patio during the summer but then again, there\u2019s nothing wrong with sitting out on the patio when the clock says 9.00 rather than 10.00. Indeed, what does the time on the clock face have to do with the amount of daylight the sun is providing? The biggest factor determining whether or not we can sit outdoors on a summer\u2019s evening in this country is whether it\u2019s raining or snowing!<\/p>\n
Still, it is what it is and last weekend our clocks turned back to Greenwich Mean Time once again. Ordinarily, this is one of my favourite days of the year \u2013 that extra hour in bed is heaven itself. This past Sunday, however, I woke up at 7.00, made the coffee and came back to bed to read the morning\u2019s newspapers on the iPad. Only then did I realise that it was only 6.00 am! It\u2019s bad enough when they steal this hour off you every year; to not realise that they\u2019ve finally returned it is extraordinarily frustrating!<\/p>\n
Even so, I wasn\u2019t as frustrated as Molly was. When it came to dinner time I had enormous difficulty persuading her that it wasn\u2019t \u201ctime\u201d for her dinner yet; the clock only said 4.00 pm and, as we all know, dinner time for Molly is 5.00 pm. Certainly, she knows it. Every day beginning at about ten minutes to five she arrives at your side and looks longingly into your eyes. It\u2019s clear there is a degree of telepathy going on here as she wills you to stop whatever it is you\u2019re doing, make your way to the kitchen and put together a delicious meal to be deposited on the floor in her favourite corner.<\/p>\n
So, at about 3.55 she began to initiate her pleadings. Every couple of minutes afterwards she would appear at my side looking at me longingly and then, eventually, accusatorily \u2013 have you forgotten my dinner you b*****d? Am I not being fed tonight for some reason utterly unknown to me? Why or why do I live with such mean-spirited owners?<\/p>\n
I suppose I could be persuaded to embrace the whole ridiculous concept of altering the clocks for an utterly artificial purpose if we were to adopt the strategy I recently heard on one of the recent Car Talk podcasts courtesy of Click & Clack. They recently read a letter on the show which proposed a modest change in the way in which we introduce Day Light Savings Time which is, simply, ingenious and, if adopted, would certainly silence the ranting criticisms of me and everyone else who opposes the concept.<\/p>\n