Thanks goodness that’s over. Goodbye to my least favourite night of the year and the dreadful week that inevitably follows in its wake. Farewell for another twelve months when it will, once more, lob upon the doorstep like a marooned but distantly related backpacker determined to move in and devour the contents of the refrigerator wholesale. But for now I must suffer through the consequences of its most unwelcome arrival. Truth be told, I’m tired, grumpy and for this entire week have felt as though I’m running late. Thanks for nothing, daylight savings.
Thanks goodness that’s over. Goodbye to my least favourite night of the year and the dreadful week that inevitably follows in its wake. Farewell for another twelve months when it will, once more, lob upon the doorstep like a marooned but distantly related backpacker determined to move in and devour the contents of the refrigerator wholesale. But for now I must suffer through the consequences of its most unwelcome arrival. Truth be told, I’m tired, grumpy and for this entire week have felt as though I’m running late. Thanks for nothing, daylight savings.
Once upon a time, daylight savings was shorter. In fact, it used to start in the last weekend of October. But like some deadly virus, it has slowly spread and now occupies half the year. That means that for a whole six months, we’re running on summertime. Summer, however, is just as long as it always was. I don’t recall anyone voting to expand daylight savings. It’s one of those things that just seems to have happened when we were putting the bins out or looking the other way.
Perhaps it’s climate change. As the earth’s temperature increases, maybe summer and (therefore) summertime, has increased along with it. Doubtless, the Paris accord contains a sub-clause somewhere up the back that reinforces the need to curb emissions and halt the increase in global temperatures in order to contain the spread of daylight savings. Sometimes, looming disasters are described by the number of minutes until midnight. This method, of course, becomes wholly redundant when you have to wind the clock forward an hour. Folks, we are in serious trouble.
I truly resent the start of daylight savings. Every hour I have is precious, especially those in the middle of the night because that’s when I do all my best sleeping. If they dropped an hour between four and five o’clock on a Monday afternoon, I probably wouldn’t mind so much. But to be robbed of a whole hour over the weekend is patently unfair. It’s nothing short of burglary. The effect was exacerbated by the fact that I was unaware that it was due to start as early in October as it was. I felt as though the whole catastrophic experience snuck up on me whilst my back was turned. I was, it seems, completely unprepared.
I mean, where does that missing hour go? Not just mine, but yours too. Just imagine all the things you could have achieved this week with another sixty minutes in your back pocket. You could have finished that book you’ve been reading, gone for a long walk or cooked a meal. Instead, you’ve been way, way, way too busy because some unelected time bandit stole an hour that rightly belongs to you. They have some nerve.
When daylight savings kicks off, the first thing I feel is tired. Then I spend the rest of the entire week that follows trying to get over the fact that I feel tired. And it’s not just me that’s suffering. The dog is confused. The curtains are fading and the cow that I’m currently renting the back room to is confused-as-all-get-out in terms of when to rock up for milking. It’s an incredibly unsatisfactory state of affairs. I can’t begin to think how Flava Flav copes with these kind of shenanigans. I think it’s time we reconsidered the whole idea of moving the clock hand around as though it were some kind of plaything. Time should march to its own beat. It ought to be sacrosanct.
This madness must stop. If we don’t act now, daylight savings will continue its ceaseless march and take over the entire year. Soon, there’ll be no more regular time. Normal time will cease to matter at all and, instead, we’ll always be an hour ahead of where we should be. My fear is that taking over the whole year won’t be enough for those daylight savings extremists who believe we’re all better off from the exercise inherent in winding the clock forward. Having successfully moved the clocks forward by an hour, there’s now a risk that they’ll seek to claim yet another hour, leaving us a full one hundred and twenty minutes adrift from reality. Before we know it, time will be meaningless.
I appreciate that Queensland has long recognized that daylight savings is dangerous. They have continued to hold out against the advancing tide of summertime, perhaps sensing that it was the thin end of the wedge. I plan to move there. I will seek refuge in the sunshine state to pursue a life free from the tyranny of daylight savings. Only in Queensland will I able to keep the hour that rightfully belongs to me.
There are some practical impediments, though. Upping sticks and moving north is far easier said than done. There’s another way. Instead of moving, perhaps this is a problem that should be faced head on. It’s time to take a stand. Or, at least, it would be time to take a stand if some oxygen thief hadn’t wound the clock forward. As of this moment, I will be boycotting daylight savings. If you and I are due to meet, you might wish to take this into account, lest you should end up twiddling your thumbs for an hour. Time, I feel, is on my side.