Inverse Christmas

It is, as we all know, that dreadful day, the worst in the calendar. It is truly the complete inverse of Christmas.

Christmas is a day of happy celebration, of hope for the future, of bright moments and an early night in a warm bed.

Clocks Go Forward Day is terrible.

I was obliged to get up an hour earlier than any civilised being could possibly consider reasonable. In consequence I have been sleepily struggling to stay awake all day, bleary-eyed and miserable, and worse, the day seems to have stretched out for ever.

I have not yet changed all of the clocks, and so every now and again have been assailed by a happy surprise when I have discovered that it is not as dreadfully late as I thought it must be, only to have my happiness dashed by recollection a moment later.

Worse, I am now obliged to be at work, even though it is not dark.

I loathe the clocks going forward. It is the lowest point of the year. We are now going to be assailed with eternal daylight, the sun does not go over the yardarm until ridiculously late, and domestic labours continue until long into the night.

I thought I was finishing work prudently early last night, but when I got home a glance at my better informed telephone horrified me, and I had to dash round emptying the dogs and hurling wood into the stove in order to make it into bed before there was no point. Even after a frantic rush the morning was still several hours old before I collapsed into bed, and it seemed to be only a very few minutes later when I had to collapse out of it again to take Oliver to work.

He has got a perfectly good car, but there are so many teeming millions in Bowness at the moment that there is nowhere to park it.

Even at ten o’clock this morning they were everywhere, like bluebottles on a dead badger.

I do not like tourists when I am tired. Not having sufficient sleep puts me in completely the wrong frame of mind for stupid questions. Indeed a very few minutes ago, when a would-be customer complained that I was parked too close to the wall for him to get in, instead of just getting in on the other side, I glanced out of the window and said Why do you imagine I want you to get in?

He got in anyway.

I may not be cut out for a customer service role.

After I had taken Oliver to work the sun was shining, tactlessly, so I shoved the dogs in the back of the taxi and went up to the farm for some firewood. The builders are all on holiday and so their supply has dried up, but fortunately there is lots still stacked in the field.

I chucked the dogs out once we got on to the lane, for them to run behind the car. They seem to like doing this, and get very excited when they realise that it is about to happen, but I am aware that it doesn’t look good, and we barrelled past half a dozen clucking tourists on our way, all of them staring and pointing as the dogs belted along, tongues hanging out as they tried, with potentially lethal consequences, to overtake the taxi.

Mark had made such tidy wood stacks that I didn’t want to spoil any of them, so I dragged out some uncut lengths and hauled them back to cut them up at home.  His garden seemed to be flourishing nicely, with rows and rows of parsnips and garlic, and some thoroughly overblown sprouts that needed to be dug up and composted, but I didn’t. There are only so many hours in a day, even if the Government has messed it up by making it longer than it ought to be.

The dogs ran behind the car again on the way back.

Once I had got home and sawn up the firewood I had to clean out the taxi. I had covered the back up with a sheet, but of course the dogs and my boots were caked in mud. This did nothing to improve the definite impression of the day being an absolute inverse of Christmas. Scraping mud intermingled with scraps of last night’s customers’ kebabs off the mats is not an activity which fills one with springtime optimism, and I was grumpy indeed by the time I had finished.

I am sure I will get used to it. Summertime will probably grow on me eventually.

Probably a bit more sleep will help.