Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, March 24, 2004
EMERGING FROM THE DARKNESS
'I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.' William Shakespeare (King Richard II)
COME next weekend, the darkness will finally be banished and we can all get back to living normally. On Saturday morning, the sun will rise at 7.24am. Then, overnight Saturday, the clocks will revert to Central Standard Time and Sunday’s sunup will be at 6.25. Have I mentioned how much I dislike daylight saving? Hallelulah! For the next seven months until the end of October, the world will return to normal and I can slumber peacefully again. All this month I have slept hardly at all. Waking with no sun is not natural. Each night I have gone to bed worrying about it. I never awoke really refreshed. Before clocks, people sensibly went to sleep in the dark and arose with the light. Had I stayed in bed until the sun rose this morning, as nature intended, I would still be lying there. Instead, I had to drive to work with the street lights on and it's still dark outside now. The mornings this week will not be as dark again until deepest winter. Next Saturday's sun will rise at the same time as it does in June. What's the point of living in sunny Adelaide - the Athens of the South - if the sun is not up when you are ready to start the day? To be fair, Athens also embraces daylight saving although the concept of time has never overly troubled the Greeks, as will be seen by the missed construction deadlines for the Olympic Games. With more sun in the morning from next week, there will be extra time for aimless walks in the park and bird watching, and for taking rubbings of gravestones at the cemetery down the road. Also, I want to be out there early riding my bike, not lying in bed waiting for the sun to catch up with my twitching leg muscles. Scientists tell us we live upon a gently decelerating planet. What are the implications of this? Will the sun rise later and later? If I had my way, heaven and earth would be moved to ensure sunrise occurred at 6am every day of the year, winter and summer. Yes, sunset would be around 4pm in mid-winter but who cares at that stage of proceedings? I don't. By then, it's cold and wet and I'm ready for bed anyway by 4 o'clock. But the real bugbear in switching time back and forth is having to reset the digital clocks, the microwave, the video recorder and the car radio. No simple task, each device requires its own instruction manual. Whenever I change the car radio, I always manage to wipe all the pre-set stations. Technology is a false dawn.
