Sunday, March 30, 2008

BST or not BST

03/30/2008

This weekend when time springs forward to British Summer Time the old arguments about daylight saving are delivered by the usual cranks with more crackpot theories than giggles from Charlotte Green following the “pee in a jar” incident. Personally I do not have much of a view on the subject as along with 90% of the population of the North Argyll Glens I do not change my clocks, preferring to stick to Greenwich Mean Time or Universal Time Constant as our Euromasters insist on calling it to avoid the blatant Englishness of the use of Greenwich. Let’s face it an hour either way makes no difference in these lonely parts where hostelries tend to be fairly flexible with their opening hours.

I suppose it all depends on one’s beliefs and the past weeks have certainly shown a lot of them to be built on severely shifting sands. I seem to have been stuck in small spaces with believers of every hue justifying their faith in the integrity of banks, the existence of God, Gordon Brown, and the resurrection, not forgetting the holy grail of the total terror and certainty of Global Warming. The later seems to be backed by the ridiculous number of beardy PhDs who publish learned articles based in the early arrival of blue night moths, so it must be true even when it is obviously blatant balls. Even a gentle tease will bring down the fury of melting ice caps on the baronial bonce from the doom laden believers. Frankly I am not prepared to have some chap from Bathgate sticking his gizmo up my motor’s delicate exhaust pipe to fine me £66, when Johnnie Chinaman is building ten coal fired power stations each and every week. It makes just as much sense as the board of HBOS filling their boots with shares the day after the price collapsed following despicable rumours about the bank’s solvency, or perhaps the huge boost in oil extraction now that super profits seem guaranteed on the reserves which will last us for centuries to come.

Recently various things have reminded me of the wonderful, though infrequent letters I used to await with unbridled anticipation from my father whilst I was away at school. Looking back it must have taken him quite an effort to compose these beautifully written mini diaries of his week/fortnight/month one assumes prompted by my mother. I must try proper writing again rather than this electronic thing, if only to broadcast the mystery of the skeleton in the tent at Bridge of Orchy, a story that father would have loved, where is the Audi that accepts the keys found in the tent? Communication also explains my long absence from these pages for those of you still interested. My laptop was seized at the beginning of March and chaos followed in all our systems as Big Brother considered my recent stay in Switzerland. Now that I seem to be in the clear dearest Dottie has invested heavily in a new room that looks a little like Houston Mission Control and I have been warned to stay well clear of this “off limits” area. However, the call of shopping has attracted all the girls away for the day and I have managed to hack into a document that I can publish, although switching the whole ramboodle on was enough of an effort. Yours Aye, Archie, The Baron Trollaigh.