Once, when we were young and our house was bigger, I decided to follow him round and put the clocks back an extra hour again. He got really mad and spent the extra hour resetting them all. Even then, no-one was quite sure what the actual time was the following morning. I was in a lot of trouble.
Fascinating how we mess around with time isn't it? I think the Intrepids find this one much more depressing than the spring-forward-clock-change, as it marks the official end to British Summer Time and the beginning of those long, dark, evenings. Yes, the nights are drawing in rapidly now, my father will soon be saying, with all the predictability of a man who repeats the same phrases every year. It'll soon be dark at four o'clock, mark my words.
Thank heavens for Christmas! Well, actually, first for the Romans who sort of decided that winter was a bit too depressing and invented a party right in the middle of it. While Saturnalia wouldn't really be my kind of thing, the event that replaced it is a stroke of festive genius - not to mention the hope, light, life and future that we celebrate bursting into the darkness of our world every 25th of December.
It's always the microwave that's tricky. He's beeping away at it, scrolling through the digital numbers. I think the ritual is a homeowner thing. Perhaps when I own a house, I'll feel that same magnificent pride in fiddling with the clocks: swinging open the glass case of the grandfather clock (I imagine having) and pushing the hands round with my index finger; rifling through kitchen drawers, trying to find the manual for the oven; getting angry with the DVD player, that sort of thing.
Ah, I'm not there yet. Let's not get ahead of ourselves, eh? We have to go backwards an hour first.
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