The day I dread - turning the clocks back

Sunday 30 October 2011

 

5.45 am

The awful day the clocks go back: we say “go” back as if they did it themselves; an illusion fostered by the computers who do indeed change the hour without our intervention. Presumably the deed was done at 2.am – a tiny movement on the digital display; two becomes one. It’s an illusion because they can only do this if a human being tells them to. The other clocks, those run by simple electric motors simply keep ticking away recording the passing hours. These we have to reset by hand.

That’s an easy job – one finger does it in seconds, but how can I change my body clock? -  this strange bundle of neural impulses inside my brain which tells me it is time to get up. For years its waymarks have been drifting slowly forwards: it always feels more natural to do things earlier rather than later. It takes a continual effort, a constant vigilance, to wait a little longer for the next meal, to work for another 15 minutes when you feel like stopping, to stay awake another half an hour in the evening, and hardest of all to stay in bed longer when you feel like getting up.  While all you out there, the great consensus, are rejoicing at being allowed another hour in bed, I am wondering how I am going to do everything a whole hour later than my body requires.

Today I did not even begin the task. I am still firmly in yesterday’s time. As I go through the day I will find ways to delay things and hope to keep going longer in the evening. If I manage that, there is a chance I may wake later tomorrow. I will get there eventually but it will take at least a week.  Then I can enjoy the winter in the knowledge that next spring the tables will be turned: the arrival of British Summer Time will give me an extra hour. For a few glorious days we early risers will be on top of the clock, riding the hours. This adaptation will be easy, and if talk in the media is correct, we may never have to face the clocks going back again.

This computer may have changed its clock but the Blogger site still thinks it's yesterday - must be run by late risers!