Spring Forward - A Steve Rant

For any newcomers to the blog, Steve is a recurring character who likes to rant to his long-suffering friend Johnny about the little things in life. Here is an example, and here is another

For audio click here

“You know what pisses me off,” Steve said.

Johnny rolled his eyes. “Where do I start?” he said. “Too many types of coffee? Milk in coffee? people smoking? Adverts? First records?”

“Okay, I’ll rephrase that, do you know what is pissing me off today?”

“Go on,” Johnny made himself comfortable.

“Well the clocks change on Sunday,” he took a mouthful of beer.

“Oh yeah, why do they still do that? It has always seemed pointless to me,” Johnny agreed.

“Well it’s not the clocks changing that I mind about so much. It’s just… well you know me,” Steve picked up a beer mat and tapped it on the table. “ I very rarely hark on about how things were better back in the day.”  

“You don’t?” Johnny said.

“No, Those kids these days don’t know what they are missing out on, memes on Facebook really annoy me. I mean if someone had told me when I was seven that I could have a tablet computer that did just about anything I wanted it to, I would have ditched that Raleigh Chopper or the football faster that you could say yabba dabba doo. Don’t tell me kids these days are missing out, they have the best of both worlds. It’s us who missed out, Jesus we had pong.”

“Steve what’s this got to do with clocks?” Johnny asked, scratching his head.

“I’m getting to it.” Steve replied. “So I’m not one to go on and on about the good old days, but do you remember the good old days when changing the clocks used to be a thing, something exciting, a little bit of jeopardy?”

“What?” Johnny didn’t look impressed.

“Well you know you had to remember to change the clocks. You had to decide if to change them before you went to bed or when you got up and then if you forgot you’d end up being an hour late or an hour early or spending the whole day thinking it was the wrong time. There was always someone turning up to the rugby an hour after kick off. And then there would always be that one clock in school that never got changed.”

“And your point is?” Johnny said.

“Well these days it is all done digitally, your phone, your computer, even the clocks in the office change automatically. There’s no sense of risk, no sense danger. Forget to change your clock, and the alarm still wakes you up at the right time. You wouldn’t need to know there was a time change at all.” Steve paused, beer mat in mid tap. “It really makes you think doesn’t it?”

“Not really.” Johnny replied. 

 “Well the government could be fucking with us, changing the time every night just by two or three minutes, so it is not your analogue clock that is slow, but the night was a little bit shorter so we all get to work earlier. Then during the day they slow the time down so we work longer.”

“Steve,” Johnny said. “It’s your round.”