We’ve swapped GMT for G’n’T in our new time zone F

OR almost as long as I can remember, my life has been governed by time.

At senior school, the first lesson of every new year was spent drawing up our individual timetable, detailing where we should be, at what time, and which subject we’d be studying.

By the time I started work, as the cubbiest of cub reporters, things were hardly any less rigid.

The dreaded rotas, compiled by the deputy news editor, indicated start times, finish times, assignments (crown court, magistrates’ court, council meetings, parochial church council sessions, community health council get-togethers etc – my, how glamorous it all was) days off and lunch hours for everyone bar the most senior hacks, a collection of rather louche characters who, it seemed to me, spent most of their days and nights propping up the bar of the police club at the local nick.

With the advent of the internet, this horological fascism took on a new dimension and for the last few years I worked in an office where everyone was virtually wired up to a centralised diary linked to both their laptops and their smartphones.

Every 15 minutes, somewhere in the office, a sharp beep would remind someone that their appointment/ interview/conference call/appraisal/ quiet word/severe reprimand was imminent, had arrived or was overdue.

Sometimes, for important events like fire alarms or the weekly redundancy announcement, everyone’s alarms would go off together and the office would burst into a frenzy of panicked activity.

For now, however, time has ceased to exist for us in our little mobile gin palace and I’m starting to appreciate what it must mean to be off the clock.

Before we came away, retired friends were fond of saying to us that they didn’t know how they found time to go to work, so hectic and actionpacked were their schedules.

To test this out, I’d often call them up.

“I’ve got a day off on Friday,” I would say, “How about a round of golf?”

“Sorry,” would come the reply, “I’m power-walking at nine, followed by a tennis lesson at 10, I’m giving a talk on archaeology to the Museum of the Third Age at 11.30, roller-disco at two and life drawing for the rest of the afternoon.”

Cynically, I would think unkind thoughts, like ‘Oh, get a life,’ until I realised they had one and I didn’t.

But, as I’ve found, having ‘a life’ can also mean the freedom to have no conventional life at all.

On Abbey Road’s Long Medley – Paul McCartney’s suite of songs documenting the break-up of the Beatles – he sings: “Oh, that magic feeling, nowhere to go.”

I now know what he means: no meetings, no-one putting pressure on you to be somewhere at a certain time.

It’s a celebration of inactivity, not a lament to it.

It’s got to the point where I’ve stopped wearing a watch, I’ve let my phone contract expire and I’m not forever hooking up to wifi at accommodating cafes and bars just to find out if my brother-in-law has helpfully informed the world, via his Facebook status, that he’s “Just finished work – time for a beer”.

Yesterday, I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what day it was, never mind the correct time.

“Is it Saturday, or Sunday,” I asked my wife. “Do you know, I’m not sure either,” came the reply. While this might have been a worrying foretaste of what’s to come in later life, when we’re confused as much about our identities as the hour, we preferred to think of it as a sign we’ve shaken off the yoke of our previous existence and moved into a new time zone – less GMT and more G‘n’T. There are no elevenses, no lunch hours, no set bedtimes. We can’t even get UK TV so we can’t build our evenings around EastEnders, the 10 o’clock news, or – our guilty pleasure – the late evening reruns of Tipping Point.

There are no English-language newspapers, either, to signal the passing days.

We turn in at the end of a convenient chapter of our books or an episode of whatever boxset we’re watching on the DVD and wake up when the sun fights its way through the paper blinds of the roof light and tickles our noses.

So, today could be Saturday, or Sunday, or a week on Tuesday.

In our world, where time is concerned only one thing is for sure. It’s running out fast. Next month: It’s getting mighty crowded