The zones of time

Saturday 26 March 2021

On Sunday at 2:00 a.m., Britain switches to daylight saving time. What a relief.

I remember reading Dava Sobel's excellent slim book, Longitude, many years ago, and being struck by the part of the story that describes how time zones even came to be necessary when travel-- specifically, train travel--got speedy. Communication too; the telegraph, I think made it possible and sometimes necessary to know what time it was somewhere else.

I sometimes feel I live in three separate time zones: Eastern, Pacific, and Greenwich (or Universal, as it has come, somewhat pompously, to be known).

Toronto is on Eastern time, though not by much. Toronto really does have delusions of east-coastness, while in fact being much more both by geography and character a midwestern city. For part of February and much of March, I was on the west coast, in British Columbia and in California. 

Whistler while you ski...

Cold and sonny, UBC

Berkeley bounty

Point Reyes

Campanile, UCB

Add three hours to figure when to chat with husband and the offspring residing in Toronto. For two of my western weeks I was working, and trying, if not to keep to then at least to overlap with office hours. I became an early riser. Now that I am back east--in what passes for springtime in southern Ontario (just add snow)--I subtract three hours for conversations with son in Vancouver or parents in Los Angeles, or for some work meetings with lucky colleagues based in the west (which I maintain IS best).

While I have not visited the UK for more than two years, since (just) before the pandemic, I surround myself with it in other ways. I study Hebrew "there" and for much of the pandemic, I have attended a choir "there": Polina Shepherd's Sing With Me. I chat with family and friends there, carefully calculating time differences to avoid waking anyone up. I depend for much of my entertainment and news on the BBC. I like to listen to The Archers in real time, when possible, in order to join in with the 'tweetalong', a group of folks who possibly take this long-running radio soap opera a tad too much to heart. "Eccentric but not dangerous" is how one of our number described us. So, I add five hours from Toronto; eight from the west coast.

Mother-daughter outing
Victory Trailhead

There comes a twist in the tale though. A week into my western travels, daylight saving time took hold. I love this weekend every year, especially since moving to Canada (and even more since clocks became connected and change themselves automatically). Losing that hour is a small price for the harbinger of winter's close, even though experience has taught me that the end of a Toronto winter brings at least two months of an English-style winter before actual spring bursts forth. Here in Toronto, March brings us tentative snowdrops and struggling crocuses, species that emerged, bloomed, and faded in England months ago. Not until mid-April and May will we see here the bright heads of daffs and tulips. 

Crocus coming up

Snowdroplets

The trouble is that the UK, perhaps happy enough with its early floral bounty, holds out for several more weeks before bothering to switch its clocks. In the autumn, it's the reverse. The two continents do not align on switching back to standard time. Thus suddenly the difference is four hours between London and Toronto and nine hours if you're in LA. No, wait. Seven hours. It's so confusing. I resort to counting on my fingers (or checking the 'world clock' app on my phone). I like to think that I am fairly decent at arithmetic-- I was in an honors maths program and took both calculus and statistics at university--but I find that as soon as numbers are attached either to time or money, my brain shuts down.

So, it has been a struggle, this time zone business. There are many things I would change in the world if I could. Most of them are a lot bigger and more important than my puny struggles to add and subtract hours. The war in Ukraine and the anathema of Putin. The ongoing uncertain landscape of the covid pandemic. The inability of the Academy Awards to run smoothly and peacefully. Even so, if I could humbly request that the UK and North America agree to change their clocks on the same days, twice a year, I would be very grateful for a positive reply.  

And Putin, begone. To a place beyond timezones.