TheBanyanTree: What am I to do?

[John Bailey]

Sunday October 26, 2003

WHAT AM I TO DO?

I have this fascination with the two nights a year when the clocks change, 
from GMT to BST and back again, that drives me to find an excuse, any 
excuse, to stay up so late that I might just as well stay up a bit longer 
to witness the actual change.

It's all the fault of our radio-controlled clocks, of course. Back in the 
days before such technological marvels, and before all-night radio 
broadcasting, leave alone all-night TV broadcasting, there was no external 
sign at two o'clock in the morning to indicate that anything had changed. 
We used to make the rounds of the house before going to bed and change all 
the clocks with a small amount of ceremony and a degree of solemnity. When 
we woke in the morning there was an anxious moment or two until the radio 
announcer confirmed the time, just in case we'd moved the hands the wrong 
way. Never did, of course, but you have to check these things.

Now we have clocks that don't need adjusting, that take their time from 
signals broadcast in the long wave from central locations in scientific 
institutions, coordinating them with electronic marvels that are in their 
turn coordinated with the pulse of the very universe itself. Come 
change-over time, they go forward or backwards visibly and automatically, 
and I like to stay up to see them do it.

I suppose that, by so doing, I feel closer to the realities of time, and 
the older I get the more important that seems to be. Not so much an urge to 
improve the shining hour as to hold on to and savour every minute of it.

So anyway, there we were, positioned in the hallway at two o'clock in the 
blessed a.m. so that we could keep an eye on the little digital clock on 
the TV news broadcast, and on the analog radio clock in the kitchen as well 
as the digital radio clock in my study. I'd sort of hoped for a synchronous 
sign that adjustment was in progress but that wasn't to be.  First thing 
that happened was that the little TV clock disappeared altogether. The 
radio clocks ticked on as if nothing had happened. Then, at three minutes 
past the hour, the digital clock blinked and set itself back exactly one 
hour.  Fifteen or sixteen seconds later the analog clock stopped altogether 
-- it can fast forward but it can't go backwards so it sits silent for an 
hour when the clocks go back, to restart on receipt of the appropriate 
signal sixty minutes later.

"Well, that's confusing," I said.

"I can see that," Graham yawned. "Is it bed-time now?"

"Might as well be, I suppose."

At that moment the TV clock appeared on the screen once more, corrected, 
but not exactly in accord with the digital clock. There were three or four 
seconds between them.

"Now I'm really puzzled," I said.

"It's probably satellite delay."

I flicked over to the terrestrial broadcast of the same channel.  Sure 
enough, it was different from the satellite broadcast. Then I powered up 
the computer to find that the clock display on that had corrected itself 
but, again, was different from both TV times, and the digital clock time.

"My brain hurts," I said.

"Only one cure for that."

"What's that, then?"

"Bed-time."

Shortly after lights out Harry Cat moved into his privileged position in 
the crook of my shoulder, turned once and settled down for the night.

"I'm still puzzled, Harry," I whispered.

And this morning, when I got up to a quiet house that seemed to be lighter 
than it ought at that hour, I turned on the radio to check the time. Up 
came the Greenwich Time Signal and I checked it against the analog clock in 
the kitchen, which takes its timing from Frankfurt, in Germany. They were a 
few seconds out. I raced into the study to check the digital clock that is 
controlled from Rugby, in the U.K. That seemed to be in synch with the 
radio but I still wasn't sure.

So an hour later I had the digital radio in the kitchen switched on ready 
for the time signal once more, and also the digital radio channel piped 
into the TV via satellite and, last but not least, the ordinary FM 
broadcast radio receiver in the study.

"I'm going to settle this once and for all," I said to Dolly the Mega-Cat, 
who was watching me anxiously.

Up came the signal on the radios. Pip-pip-pip-pip-PIP.

Can you imagine my horror when I realised that all three radio sets were 
pipping at slightly different times. And the deeper horror I felt when I 
realised that not only did my marvellous radio-controlled clocks disagree 
with one another by three seconds, they were neither of them in synch with 
any of the radio sets?

"Oh, Dolly," I said. "What am I to do? Now I'll never know what time it is 
again."


--
John Bailey   Carmarthenshire, Wales
journal of a writing man
<http://www.oldgreypoet.com>