It’s just coming up to 6pm, and I’m on the journey home. Slightly strangely, this post will not hit the blog until after 7, due to a couple of reasons I won’t bother you with (okay, perhaps I will - the wire to connect the phone to the laptop to download photos is in my bag above my head, and I can’t be bothered to get it down… okay, I know - I could have done it in the time it took to type this. Meh)
I would take a photo out of the window right now, but I’m sure you’re not really interested in… perhaps you are. I always think I should take artsy pictures that would look good hanging on the wall - but forget that the majority of people who read this blog are not in the UK - so therefore probably want to see what I might consider “very ordinary”.
In the distance we have some canal boats. Correct me if I’m wrong, but you don’t have them in the US do you? Before rail appeared in the UK (and yes, we did invent it), heavy goods were transported around the country via a network of manmade waterways called canals. Although large stretches of the routes used existing rivers, quite often they had to traverse hills and valleys - in which case flights of locks and viaducts were built.
How to explain a Lock to somebody who has never seen one? Imagine you want a river to go up a hill. Then imagine building a flight of stairs, where the front and back of each step can be opened, and the series of steps can be topped up from a pump at the top of the hill… oh, just go look them up on Flickr or Google Images. It will all become clear.
I’m slipping, aren’t I.
The sun is out this evening for the first time I can recall since starting work in London. Changing the clocks to daylight savings (or “British Summer Time” as we call it) may have a lot to do with it. On Sunday we lost an hour in the UK - meaning back to dark mornings, and lighter evenings.
I believe the clock change was implemented to help farmers working on crops during the spring and summer months. I seem to remember reading somewhere that the school terms in the UK are based around the crops too - so the children would be available at the appropriate times of year to help with sowing seeds (the Easter break), and collecting the harvest (the summer holidays). Of course these days children spend their summer playing Playstation, or sat on some beach in the Mediterranean with their parents.
Everything changes… I’m never really sure if I like the fact that things change or not. I never really look back, but I do think it’s a shame that some of the practices I regard as “valuable” are dying out.
Neighborhoods are a good example. We only know one family in our neighborhood - our direct next door neighbors. When I was a child (oh my god - twenty five years ago), we knew every family in the street, no matter if they had children or not. We talked to everybody. Everybody talked to us.
Whatever happened to us all - when did we stop talking?