Yesterday the government (for some unfathomable reason that probably has to do with a Cunning Plan to bring the Franco-Prussian War to an end before Christmas but has been irrelevant during living memory), just as they do every year at this season, commanded us all to get up an hour early. And like lobotomised lemmings with a deep sense of personal inadequacy, we obeyed them.
I don't know what this outdated survival from the paternalistic nanny state is still doing in the 21st century - no, not so much the nanny state as the PE teacher state, the sergeant-major state, the it's-for-your-own-good pull-your-socks-up have-a-cold-shower I'm-not-doing-this-for-my-own-benefit get-a-move-on you're-spoiling-it-for-the-rest-of-us why-don't-you-just-try there's-always-one put-some-effort-into-it don't-argue-just-do-it who-do-you-think-you-are-talking-to because-I-said-so fuck-you-you-horrible-little-man state - but I do know what it does to my much abused body clock and those of just about everyone else I meet. Two or three weeks of compulsory jetlag for the entire working population. I bet the murder rate suddenly leaped up.
My daughter will have been "late" for school, according to the new clocks. Unless she made the two kilometres between home and school in 14 minutes that is. It was horrible just being in the flat with her this morning. Grumpy, tired, pre-menstrual. (And that was just me). What did she do to deserve me knocking on her bedroom door at 0630 telling her to get up and get dressed? Except of course the government lied to us and forces us to lie to each other and pretend that it wasn't 0630 but 0730.
And I'll get blamed of course. There will be snotty letters from school "she's always late on Monday morning and Sunday's one of the days she stays with you!" And this statutory clock-abuse isn't helping. What gets a teenager out of bed, or once out of bed out of her bedroom? Today there was a glass of orange juice passed through the jar of the door, followed by cup of coffee half an hour later, and the smell of toast being made in the kitchen. Didn't work of course. What could work on a day like today?
What am I meant to do? Beat her? No use yelling. What self-respecting 14-going-on-15 year-old gets to school on time just because their parents tell them to? I know I didn't. Maybe her mother can still barge into her room without knocking, pull the bedclothes off her, and threaten her with a cup of cold water. But that's not really a post-pubertal option for Dads. Anyway, it's unbiblical. It is written "look not upon the nakedness of they father". And it is also written "Do as thou would be done by". That's good enough for me. Teenager's bedrooms should remain unvisited (other than by invitation) and untidied (other than by their denizens) as much as I'm allowed my own early-morning privacy and Saturday-morning lie-in (Oh what a great day in the life of a parent, that first Saturday when you can say "get your own breakfast")
And so to work, all of us all over London like the whining schoolboy ... creeping like snail unwillingly to school (Shakespere knew what was what). Head aching, mind stressed, body more than usually asleep - ordinary mornings are bad enough, Mondays are worse, but this?
The only partial consolation is that I could find myself a seat on the train to work. Presumably the rush-hour is even more spread out than it usually is, on this Annual Fuck With The Clocks Day. Some, the dutiful arse-lickers of the Establishment, will have followed orders and obediently left home an hour earlier than they did last week. Others will have got up at their normal time and got to work an hour "late". Most, I suspect, like me. were somewhere in between.
Some few, some happy few, will have woken up, thought "sod this for a game of soldiers", turned over and had a decent-lie in. Even now some lucky gentlemen lie abed in England.
But, even with seats, what a train! I looked round at the faces of my fellow passengers and wondered if Hell might be like this. Huis clos in a railway carriage waiting for signals outside London Bridge on at 0800 on the Monday morning They change the clocks. (Though they lie to us and brainwash us and try to force us to pretend it is in fact 0900)
I don't like it. The natives are restless. Its quiet. too quiet.
There are fewer mobile phone wielders than usual, and what whingers they are. None of the usual jabber about the night before, or what to do to reboot the server. No moaning about mortgages or house prices or arranging to visit a flat. No wheeling, no dealing, no gossip, no fond farewells to the lucky loved one left in bed with the damp spot. No relaying the railway's reasons for canceling the train you should have been on (had you in fact got up in time), no Signal Failure at London Bridge, Earlier Incident at Finsbury Park, Planned Maintenance on the Northern Line, Previous Late Running of Incoming Service, Essential Engineering Works at Southall, Staff Shortage at Waterloo, Leaves on the Line, Wrong Kind of Trains, Advice of Short Platforms, Escaped Puma on the Track at North Chessington, Mind the Gap, Stand Clear of the Doors Please, I'll be there in 20 minutes.
There's none of that today. Today they are moaning and whinging, their every utterance a dismal bleat, an insistent but insignificant repetitive demand not to be blamed: whiny, pathetic, nasal, snotty, drivel. They are like unimaginatively nasty 7-year-old boys making unbelieved excuses to a bored but brutal headmaster for pulling the legs off flies in the girl's toilet. Eavesdropping on my fellow travellers is no pleasure today.
And they look so shitty. Two-thirds of them are obviously grumpy, all are seem tired, many look angry, two or three of them are practically in tears. One young woman does actually seem to be crying. And they all look so ugly today, the way sick strangers look under a harsh light to a clinically depressed paranoid whose taken the wrong kind of drugs. As usual there are a few beautiful women in the train - fewer than normal for some reason - but today they all look so haughty that you daren't allow your gaze to rest on them for a second; the harsh glance they give you in return says not so much "piss off you dirty old man" as "limp away and die in a lonely corner for ever you pathetic loser". It's like being stuck for ever in a doctor's waiting room with a crowd of rival hung-over racist estate agents with learning difficulties and severe toothache.
Why do we do this to ourselves? Can a people who allow themselves to be subjected to be shat on this way by the State be called free? I'm already longing for a return to real time in the autumn. And fantasising that maybe this time next year we'll say "I just can't take it any more" have the guts to leave our clocks alone.