How was your day? (Random off topic chat)

My heart swells when I read things like this infofreako . Thank you so much for writing about it (and about your other good experience the other day at 42nd Street.) People often forget to tell everyone when things are good but are quick to lament. It's fantastic to hear that there are so many good people out there, willing to go that extra mile.

Just had an expensive opticians' appointment: £345 for new glasses. The last ones have done 10 years so here's hoping the next ones do too.

Spring forward, Fall back.

23 clocks or things with clocks in them. 7 of them auto-adjust. Many of the remaining 16 are mechanical or have no concept of date and so can't be expected to know about DST, but why can't the modern devices that know the date and which timezone I'm in handle this automatically?

At least everything I have at the moment that has a clock also has a proper purpose for a clock. My old landline phone had a call-time display and when it wasn't being used as a phone it would double as a clock, because who doesn't walk across the room and pick up the phone to see what time it is? The clock wasn't used for anything useful like a call log: it existed purely to give the display something to do when the phone wasn't in use. It was the worst digital clock I've ever seen: it would drift by several minutes a week, and after a few months it wasn't even correct to the nearest hour. The battered old pendulum clock I bought at auction for £2 keeps better time.

I actually hate the devices that change automatically because I keep all my clocks 2-3 minutes fast, much to the annoyance of everyone else at Tibidabo Towers, so I struggle to change them when they do it by themselves.

However, I love it when the clocks go forward and I wish parliament would hurry up and vote to keep it that way forever more - especially now that the Scots seem to be b*ggering off on their own!

Oh no, it's not that!  I absolutely hate driving around in the dark from 4.30 onwards for several months.  So many kids and teenagers do stuff after school and it's dangerous for them to walk home alone, apart from those who live within the bright lights of a city.  Out here they have dimmed the street lamps more and more every year until now they are nothing but a faint sulphuric glow, useless for anything whatsoever.  

I can't remember when I first realised how thoroughly screwed up the idea of summer time was, but the whole concept just grates on me.

When you think about it, our regular pattern of life is ridiculous. The average person's day consists of a block of work, a block of leisure and a block of sleep, and the physical day consists of a period of light and a period of dark. Now the sensible thing to do is obviously to have the block of sleep coincide as much as possible with the period of dark and the waking activity coincide with the period of light. But most people work roughly 9-5 or 10-6, so their block of work is already mostly in the second half of the day. If they go out for a break half way though their work the sun is already past its peak and sinking. By the time they leave work three quarters of the physical day has already gone.

That's stupid. It's incredibly stupid. It's numbingly stupid. It's "When you named yourselves Homo sapiens you meant it ironically, right?" stupid.

That we have daylight saving time at all recognises that there's a problem but it's a preposterous way of dealing with it. Instead of addressing the fact that our activity day is many hours out of step with the real day it says "Hey, let's pretend the physical day is different! Let's pretend the middle of the night isn't actually the middle of the night and the middle of the day isn't actually the middle of the day!"

Why not deal with it properly? Why not start earlier? That's what DST is doing anyway, but why do we have to lie to ourselves about it?

Having a lovely day, the thought of the early start this morning wasn't nice, but I've finished work after having had a very rare short day, which was even nicer once the sun came up since we were outside.

Well, I do get up early and start my work day at 6am, and yet I wish we had summer time all year round.

I'm both a morning person and a keen walker so I long for it to be light when I set out, rather than having to start in the dark. Trouble is, at the other end of the year, I end up having to start AND finish in the dark. When I used to drive to work, I'd be doing so in the dark from about August onwards but whether walking or driving, I mind less having to start in the dark and waiting for it to get light, than having to set off in darkness, or in what remains of the daylight but knowing it will get dark on the way.

I'd prefer lighter mornings all year round but at the very least, could we please even out the interval - - before and after the new year which we currently spend on "winter" time? Makes no sense for the clocks not to go back until the late October, i.e. with only about 2 months of the year remaining, yet to have to wait nearly 3 months for them to go forward again.

One of mine bought me something from a Polish shop for mothers' day. It was citrus coloured, citrus looking and of sugary appearance. I ate it.


I think I was supposed to dissolve it in the bath.

A friend of mine recently ate a fair chunk of some 'mint flavoured candy' from Thailand before working out it was a candle...I promise I didn't laugh (too hard) at his misfortune.