Western Morning News (Saturday)
Every single tick of the clock is so precious...
WELL, as if the world isn’t full of enough mysteries. I read recently of a story that has clearly shaken the world for those who are far cleverer than me.
Are you ready for this? Recently we were told that on June 29th, midnight arrived 1.59 milliseconds too soon. Good Heavens! I’m sure we all noticed our phones not giving the appropriate time.
Seriously, this change in time has got the boffins talking because nobody knows why it happened. Apparently the rotation of the earth that day took less time to complete than at any time since the 1960’s.
As I say, I know nothing about the earth and whether it is wobbling slightly, whether geological processes and climate change make a difference. All I know is that time is a very slippery thing to gauge.
When I was at school, particularly the junior school, my memories of lessons were that they seemed to go on forever. Dreamy days where bluebottles buzzed round the hot classroom and break time and the release of the school bell seemed to take a lifetime to arrive.
Waiting for news of a loved one when they’re in hospital has, in my experience, taken an eternity. The five minutes seem like a day until the doctor arrives.
Waiting for those final months of pregnancy to slip by take an eternity, but as soon as the baby has arrived those long days of waiting disappear into the sands of time.
Planned visits for long lost family or friends seem to take forever. As a child Christmas only seems to happen every five years. And when that visit happens, and Christmas Eve arrives, suddenly the hands on the clock whizz round and it’s over. “Time and tide wait for no man” said Chaucer and he’s right.
When I was a child my father used to tell us to “pull the rope” when we were looking forward to something. We still use the expression in our family, excitedly pulling something to us.
Anyone who’s been jetlagged will know the disruption changing time zones can cause. Waking up at 3am feeling ping awake and with enough energy to paint the house is a pain and can take days for your body to adjust.
Of course, in ancient times man told the time by the sun. People rose very early and by virtue of having little or no light went to bed early. Mechanical clocks were invented in Europe in the 14th century. Pendulum
clocks came along in the mid1600’s. If you want to see the earliest turret clock in the UK, then visit Cotehele House, the National Trust property in Calstock, Cornwall. The clock is a far cry from the ones we know today and appears to be a number of cogs and wheels linked together. It was built and installed between 1493 and 1521. It doesn’t have a face but just strikes on the hour. Like most, if not all early clocks, minute hands didn’t appear on them until about 1690. Sounds a good idea to me. As one whose timekeeping can slide a minute or 10 either side of the appointed hour, just registering the hour seems a very sensible measure.
Having a rough idea of time began with the use of sundials sometime prior to 1500BC. Candles and sandglasses also were used to calibrate it. The Chinese used oil lamps and devised a way of measuring the level in the oil reservoir to measure the passing of time. Ancient man would have watched the change in shadows as the sun moves across the sky and noticed that the length of the day varies at different times of the year.
Wearing a watch is a newer invention and goes back to about the 16th century. Why “watch” I wondered? There are several explanations. Apparently sailors used the time pieces to keep track of the length of their shipboard “watches”. Another theory is that it comes from the old English word “woecce” which means “watchman” and they too wanted to keep track of the length of their shifts. What would they have made of the watches many of us now wear which relay our e-mails, texts, alarm, map readings and much much more.
Being told that we’ve been done out of a second isn’t new. I grew up with a similar thought. My parents had a very old sundial in their garden. On the inscription on the brass plate was written, “Every hour shortens life”. A cheerful little sentence if ever there was. It makes you realise that the time you’ve taken to read this article will never come back, lost in the mists of time. Makes you think, doesn’t it? Every tick of the clock is precious and we ought to fill it with something useful, helpful, fun, memorable... so don’t waste any more time on me, get out and do something!
Having a rough idea of time began with the use of sundials, sometime prior to 1500 BC