SUMMERTIME

Fostering throws up plenty of questions such as; "Why did I let myself in for this…"

No, seriously, the questions don't come only from one's own mind. Foster children ask the strangest things, sometimes tinged with enormous wisdom and insight.

Middle one yesterday;

"We put the clocks back an hour? Why?"

Me; "It's to do with daylight saving."

Him: "How does it save daylight? That's stupid. There's the same amount of daylight as before."

Me: "Well not quite, the days are getting shorter."

Him: "So it's just to fool ourselves then yeah?"

Me: "Well it means that children will go to school in daylight and that's safer for them."

Him: "What? Everyone goes by car or bus to school and they've got lights, and the streets have got lights. Queen Victoria's dead dontcha know.."

Me: "Yes but…"

Him: "In any case you say they made you put the clocks back to make it safer for kids to go to school. Bt they did it at the start of most kids half-terms when they er…aren't going to school."

Me: "It's tradition to put the clocks back an hour on the last Sunday in October."

Him: "Tradition? I saw a YouTube where it used to be a tradition in ancient Britain to eat the first born male child but they stopped when they realised the sun would rise anyway even if it didn't get its sacrifice. It's called progress duh."

I'm writing this early on the next morning, the Monday. It's 5.00am, but in my mind it's really 6.00am, we went to bed 'early' or was it our usual  time? Or was it late? I dunno.

He's right, it's silly. So;

I'm plotting letting him have his way and put all the clocks back to where they were. It'll mean dark mornings but light evenings. We work from home at the moment, the children have no reason to get up at the crack of dawn for school. The only glitch will be time checks on the radio and the TV schedules will be an hour out. But the kids don't watch conventional TV anyhoo.

The MAIN THING is - if I do this thing - I've got myself a little thing going. Having a houseful of foster children, your own children, both parents and assorted creatures needs to have something going during holidays, lockdowns, holidays, stay home and isolate, lockdown, holidays...

It might not be much but I can make something of us being the only house in the UK still on SUMMERTIME.

So I will. 

ps;

Oh-oh. I've just remembered the danger of encountering the fussy operator on the switchboard who answers the phone at 12.01pm and goes;

"Good Morni…Oh I'm so sorry, it's after noon…Good Afternoon!"

I'll miss that bridge when I come to it.