Time and seasons

I’ve been thinking about time – how my relationship with the clock is vastly different from what William and Sarah’s would have been. It’s a natural enough reflection as the days start to get shorter. Five days a week, I get up in the dark, year-round. At least in summer, by the time I leave the house, it’s bright daylight; but now we’re getting into autumn, and the street-lights are still on when I leave for the railway station, although it’s not yet so dark that I can’t see what I’m tripping over. My life is ruled by the clock – getting up and getting things done in time to catch my train; at work my Outlook calendar is always pinging to announce the next meeting; then it’s back to the station again in time to catch the train home; a short evening and then into bed in time to get enough sleep to get up and do it all again. I have clocks all over the house (each of them showing a slightly different time), and it takes three alarms to wake me up enough to get out of bed at the right time every morning.

So I was thinking – who wound the clock – William or Sarah? Did they even have a clock in the early days? Presumably William had a pocket watch. Without radio, TV and the cellphone network, how did they find out what the correct time was? Did it matter – presumably the only time they needed to be sure they were on time was for church on Sundays – and that’s what church bells are for, to call the clock-less faithful.

William and Sarah wouldn’t have been mucked around by daylight saving, either – it didn’t become permanent till 1929. Life back then would have been a bit more in tune with the seasons. As I yawn my way through winter, I often say that I’m convinced that humans are meant to hibernate in winter. I’d be only too happy to retire to my cave with a pile of unread books, a heap of DVDs, and a freezer full of food; I would emerge in spring-time rested and well read and probably 20kgs heavier. It’s daylight that gives us our get up and go, and there’s precious little of that in winter. [Two of my three afore-mentioned alarm clocks are actually lights on timers – by gradually increasing the level of light in the bedroom, my body is tricked into thinking it’s dawn, and I surface from sleep in a natural sort of way. Well, at least awake enough not to leap bolt upright in bed and put my back out when the real alarm clock starts blaring.]

The extent of artificial light available to us now means we extend the length our days way past what William and Sarah would have experienced. They would have gone to bed not much past dark in the winter time, at least at times when money was scarce – no-one was going to waste money on expensive candles or lamp fuel. No sitting around watching TV or surfing the internet! There wouldn’t have been much time for reading, particularly for Sarah, who would have been flat-tack from morning to night running her household and looking after the family. In a world that wasn’t ruled by the clock, would she have felt the same relentless pressure to get things done? Each day had its deadlines, I suppose – things to get done before the kids got up, before they got home from school, before William got home for dinner, before the daylight went. Weekly deadlines, like Monday being wash-day – Sarah probably hated Mondays just as much as working women do today! Occasional deadlines, like getting letters finished before the next ship left for England, or preparations for the next baby before “confinement”. I guess it’s all relative – Sarah might not have had to worry about train timetables and getting to meetings, but she wasn’t sitting around twiddling her thumbs and admiring the scenery either!