Clocks

I had a haircut last night.

Correction - I gave myself a haircut last night. I haven't actually 'gone' anywhere for a haircut since university. I bought a pair of clippers which cost around the same as a haircut and have cut my own hair ever since.

The clippers plug into one of the kitchen sockets. I don't know why I have always chosen the kitchen sockets. I presume it must be because they are higher up the wall than any of the other sockets in the house. The kitchen also tends to be better lit and has a hook for when I used to hook a mirror on it. It's not that I don't use a mirror any more - cutting my hair without a mirror would be a very dangerous idea - but I use a different mirror which I don't need to hook up. Anyhow, to use one of the kitchen sockets I have to unplug something.

Whatever I unplug is going to need to be reset. The sockets I use are not the ones for the toaster or the electric can-opener (surely the most indulgent and lazy of gadgets if ever there was one); but the ones either for the microwave or the smart meter. The sockets for the toaster are under a cupboard and do not afford a very good hair-cutting arena; similarly the ones for the electric can-opener are right next to the hob, which is overshadowed by the extractor hood. The smell of singeing hair the next time I cook is also slightly off-putting and another detractor from that location.

So it's microwave or the smart meter. Despite it's name, the smart meter actually isn't that smart. You would think it would be able to set itself, that maybe it had some link, if not to the caesium atomic clock in Rugby, then at least to an internet clock or even the speaking clock. But no, nothing. You have to manually set it. And then manually set the rates again. And you lose your history. All in all it is easier to unplug the microwave as that simply requires the clock setting correctly in the 24 hour format.

But this got me thinking - it wasn't that long ago that my clocks would be set fast as a matter of habit. The fastness and reasoning varied, but for a considerable period of my life I was always ahead of everyone else.

It started off at university. I had my clocks set 20 minutes fast because I knew that was how long it took me to get to lectures, or to the cinema where I worked. I'm still hazy on the logic as to why I set my clock 20 minutes fast rather than just factor in a 20minute travel time into my agenda; but then a lot of university was hazy. One of the benefits though - particularly at the cinema - was that if anyone should craftily try to look at my watch they would get a shock. Their surruptitious attempt at my subsidising their lack of timekeep would lead them to believe they weren't just late, they were very late. Particularly in the cinema. As a pure chance of coincidence, 20 minutes was also the combined length of the adverts and trailers on any particular screening. But I would be entertained as they would scurry off to the screen in a panic, usually with the girlfriend receiving some rebuke about 'if she hadn't had to straighten her hair... which was perfectly straight in the first place anyway... and the first dress was fine the first time round, why she had to try on every other dress before going back to the first dress'; or the boyfriend being berated about 'not being able to park in that first space despite it being big enough for a bus, and everyone knew that street was a one way street, and it was totally unnecessary to watch the end of the football match as it was clear they were going to lose anyway.'

But so it was that my clocks went forward.

When I started work - proper work, professional work, suit work - the clocks were adjusted to 'just' ten minutes fast. The logic for this is that I would think I was running late and hurry myself along - turning the tables and using the same trick against myself. Or so you would think. Obviously it ends up a bluff. I am fully aware of the fact the clock is ten minutes fast and that I have an extra 10 minutes to fanny around abluting myself. Rather than half past, my leaving time would be automatically corrected to twenty-to in my head. Not back-firing, just not achieving the correct result. I really am too intelligent for my own good sometimes. Any double-bluff to increase the advance further would also back-fire as I would then become even more aware of how fast each clock was.

The cards were stacking up against the principle - the arguments in favour steadily crumbling as the tides of time eroded their foundations like sandstone. I actually quite like that analogy. But just as the arguments in favour of fast-setting deteriorated, so the arguments against were bolstered. Increasing numbers of clocks around the house insipidly took control of themselves. The bedroom alarm clock had always been radio controlled; but it was joined - after a slight accident with a glass of water in the middle of the night to the predecessor - by a radio alarm clock which also took the hidden signal to reset itself. My mobile phone (by the time they started coming with alarms as standard) did exactly what it wanted. Then, as I got a bit more mature, I got a big clock. I said CLOCK. It was for my lounge. All very nice, all very black, all very stylish. All very independent - suddenly all of this technology didn't need me any more. I was passive. And not entirely in a good way. But with all of these clocks deciding what time they wanted it to be, I was becoming overruled. And in my own house. By inanimate objects.

The big clock in the lounge checks itself every day to ensure good time. It does this at 1am. It is a bit of an odd thing, if you still happen to be up at 1am, to see the clock suddenly spring into action, hands a whirl as it resets and then sets itself. And if you happen to look up in the ten or fifteen minutes whilst it contacts the radio signal, you might believe it to be midnight - a clock actually behind the times - and possibly allowing another hour to justify starting another film.

But they have not thought this through. 1am is a daft time. It may not appear to be from the outset - surely the time it checks itself is neither here nor there? Except ensuring that it happens during the night, when most people won't be put-out with 15minutes of down-time (or worse, back-time) whilst the clock checks itself, maybe? For two day of the year the clock is wrong. When British Summer Time begins at the end of March, the clocks go forward one hour. From 2am to 3am. So, the clock having already checked itself at 1am will not do so until the following day - 23 hours of wrongness. And again as we return to British Winter Time, the clock drops back from 2am to 1am. Only the clock doesn't know that it is 1am again - afterall, it only checked itself an hour ago; it's not going to do so for another 24 hours. Wrong again. Grrr.

Anyhow, all of this meant that last night as I was setting the microwave clock, my anal tendencies sprung into action and now - rather than having my clocks deliberately wrong - they must be absolutely perfect to the second.

It did get me thinking though, I aim to leave the house at 6:30. Why? Why not aim to leave at 6:33? It would be more sensible for me - I would have an extra three minutes in the house. That is time to clean my teeth. And leaving at 6:30 always makes me easily early enough for the train. 6:33 would be much more sensible. But no - it's always 15s. If I am going to the pub and miss leaving the house at 9pm, the next target is 9:15. No particular reason - it just has to be. Of course, when leaving in the morning I tend to leave at 6:33, despite the 6:30 target, so if I aimed to leave at 6:33 I would probably actually leave at 6:36 and that would be pushing it.

On a final, more sombre note, I analysed and monologued about my red trainers. Well, last night they gave up the ghost. After a torrential rainstorm, the sole of the shoe gave in and a hole enough for water-seepage occurred. The writing was on the wall. But worse was to come - as I tried to take them off later, the base and the upper decided enough was enough and parted company. This was not just the sole, this was the whole base. Being a man of material, I would normally have glued it all together to get a few more months out of the potentially heritage gear; but with them no longer providing a barrier to squelchiness there was no point. My soliloquy turned into a eulogy. No flowers.