Clocks in the UK are suffering a major crisis. Brexit Day is here (or not) and it’s also the beginning of British Summer Time. Do we go back, and if so when, and by how many years? Or just stick to depriving everyone of an extra hour in bed on Sunday?
Clocks want the uncertainty to end. “The indecision is causing real suffering,” said grandfather clock Penn Dulumb. “It is impossible to do our jobs if we can’t even decide which year we want to be in. Clocks nationwide are a tightly wound bunch. We like letting things just tick over. Some of the more militant timepieces, like the car clocks, are refusing to change at all.”
We aren’t going forward to the past today. It might be 12 April, or 22 May, or some day yet to be imagined. We might go back 30, 50 or even 100 years. What is your opinion?
“I swing back and forth,” admitted Dulumb. “I don’t know, to be honest. The whole fiasco winds me up.”
Dulumb admitted to receiving delegations from various chronological factions. “All were desperate not to lose face,” he said. “Analogue clocks were anxious that digital watches might come back into fashion. Atomic clocks were worried that leaving Euratom would put them out of work. And the sundials, bloody fair-weather timepieces, demanded complete control but refused to take any responsibility.”
Dulumb commented that Brexit was like putting a small boy in charge of his father’s favourite watch. “Instead of running smoothly, it has been shaken around, dunked in the water and got clogged up with muck,” he moaned. “You don’t put a piece of fine workmanship in the hands of an irresponsible wrecker.”
The hour is upon us. Stop all the clocks. The timetable has been torn up, the main course has finished and there is no appetite for seconds. We can only conclude with the immortal words of Douglas Adams: Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so.