In a Word . . .Time

So the clocks go forward an hour tonight and you’ll be disoriented for a week. Me too. It’s the price we pay for that extra hour in bed we had last October, and the clock never forgets.

We weren't supposed to get that extra hour last October either. In 2019 the European Parliament voted to scrap these twice-yearly time changes by 410 votes to 192, with effect from last year.

It was to be summer-time all year round in the EU; with a bright golden haze on the meadow in secula seculorum (for ever and ever). Then along came Covid.

Hah! As poet Robbie Burns wrote in "To a Mouse": "The best laid schemes o' mice an' men/Gang aft agley". Translated from the Scots, it reads: "The best laid schemes of mice and men/Often go awry." I prefer the Scots.

Humans now control nature and can undo creation. So are we gods?

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To be fair, in 2019 also, Ireland opposed this ever-lasting summer-time as approved by the EU. It made sense as our name in Latin is Hibernia, the land of winter, and it would be a contradiction to have summer-time all year round. Que? Not the case.

We opposed it because the neighbours, in another brave assertion of their new-found “independence” from things EU, had decided to remain with the old twice-yearly system after getting Brexit done. Hah! (again).

This would mean an hour difference between Dundalk in the South and Newry in the North in winter months and no Down person could be found who was prepared to tolerate a situation where they could be told, even in winter-time, that they were behind the times where Louth people were concerned.

Governments in Dublin and London vigorously denied Democratic Unionist Party claims that there were discussions by both over whether a special protocol should be introduced to address the relevant 60 minutes' difference in winter morning light between Britain/Northern Ireland and the Republic, should Ireland go along with the European Parliament decision. Custom-made, so to speak.

Both governments were also dismissive of the DUP more generally, saying that the party was known to prefer the dark anyhow and believed human intervention with time would be against the will of God.

What it all means is that we in Ireland are stuck with this “fall back” hour in October and “spring forward” in March for the foreseeable future.

Time, from Old English tima, for "an indefinite continuous duration".

Inaword@irishtimes.com