Heron Island, Great Barrier Reef, Australia

Sunday 27 October 2019

Phew!

The morning the clocks go back, and one wakes up to find an extra hour available, it seems natural to reach for the internet-abled devices, whether it's the radio stream on the phone (with headphones, so as not to annoy the neighbours) or the computer. So it was not the most pleasurable of surprises to find no wifi connection (and on the fancy fibre-optic network so many of us have signed up on in this development, too), still less to realise how temporarily bereft I felt.

By the time I thought it not too early to call their customer support, they had already put up a recorded "We're on it" announcement, and - anticlimax of the year - it was back on again reasonably quickly. But it's just another reminder of how we take so much for granted: as are so many old and recycled TV series, on the multiplicity of digital channels, where assorted plots and jokes would be impossible now, with mobile phones and the internet.

4 comments:

  1. Old TV programmes are almost like historical documents now - Classic Eastenders makes full use of the red telephone box whenever it can. Eastenders has always had a heavy reliance on phones.
    Sx

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  2. We in Arizona don't do no stinking DST - it is a blessing.

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  3. Is there talk of doing away with the change in Britain, as there is on the continent? They're targeting 2021 at this point.

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    1. Off and on. In WW2 they not only went forward for an hour all year round, they added the regular daylight saving hour on top of that in the summer. The problem is that it makes for very dark mornings, the further north you go. They reverted to GMT+DST after the war, but had another experiment with the extra hour all year round in the mid-60s, but by then the increase in cars on the road meant more accidents on the dark mornings, so it was dropped after a couple of years. Every now and again it gets raised, though (perhaps oddly, as one might have expected the Brexiteers to seize on it as "dictatorial EU meddling") the current EU discussions haven't been much remarked on.

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