FURTHERMORE
By Gerry Moran
‘Spring forward. Fall back’. I have to remember that to remind me whether the clocks go forward or back on Sunday, March 30. It’s Spring, so the clocks definitely go forward. Which means, quite simply – that we are being robbed! Robbed of 3,600 seconds, in short, robbed of an hour of our life.
As of Monday March 31 I shall be an hour older with nothing to show for it. Nadda. Nothing. Zilch. It’s crazy, really. An entire hour of our lives wiped out, “just like that” to quote the late, great Tommy Cooper, and no one seems to mind.
Well I mind. I mind because I’m in the Autumn of my life as they say and I’m in no mood to be losing one minute, let alone 60 minutes, of whatever time is left me. Okay, so I’ll get that hour back in the Fall (hence Fall back) but a lot could happen between now and then.
I genuinely feel hard done by. Do you realise what you can get up to in an hour? If I ask my wife she might say: “Look at another boring hour of sport on the telly.” And she has a point, games can be boring (but never hurling). If I mention one hour in the marital bed my beloved might reply “boring” also, “ah, not really but not quite enticing” might be her reply. Oh dear. Happens, I guess, after 40 plus years of marriage.
On the other hand – you could hear two Masses depending on who’s saying them. You could walk the Ring Road – twice – depending on your fitness and athleticism. You could enjoy, if that’s the appropriate word, a session in the gym, have a couple of pints with friends, play poker, squash, tennis whatever.
In one hour you could have a pleasant lunch in any of our excellent cafes. You could have a haircut. A manicure. A pedicure. You could fly to Manchester. To Liverpool. You could play a game of snooker if you knew where to find a table (the Home Rule Club).
Now, and this is something worth thinking about – you could do NOTHING for one hour. Doing nothing for one hour seems simple. It is not. It’s difficult. Impossible almost. Why? Because there’s always something to be done, or something that we are told to do: mow the lawn, clean the gutters, trim the hedge, paint the fence. I could go on.
To do nothing for one hour is an art form in itself – one that I’ve been working on for years but still haven’t perfected though my beloved might disagree. Bottom line is – you can do a hell of a lot in an hour. An hour I don’t want to be robbed of.
The person to blame for robbing us of this hour is one William Willett (the great-great-grandfather of Coldplay’s Chris Martin) who was born in Surrey in 1856. While out horse riding early one sunny morning he noticed that most people were fast asleep in their beds. What a waste of good daylight he thought and in 1907 he wrote, and self-published, a pamphlet called The Waste Of Daylight.
Willett [pictured] suggested that not only would people get an extra hour of daylight to enjoy by putting the clock forward but at a time when public lighting was turned off during the night over two million pounds could be saved in lighting costs! Willet’s idea was well received by David Lloyd George (Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1916-1922), Arthur Conan Doyle (the creator of Sherlock Holmes) and Winston Churchill.
Yet, despite its obvious advantages it was not introduced. It wasn’t until the horrors of the First World War and with coal running desperately short that Willett’s proposal gathered momentum. In fact the Germans, suffering their own fuel crisis, passed their Daylight Saving Bill first in April 1916. Great Britain passed its own a month later. Sadly William Willett never got to witness the introduction of his bright idea as he died in 1915.
Finally, here’s an hour that I have no problem with whatsoever: May we all be in Heaven one hour before the Devil knows we’re dead.
