What Time is It, There?

I have no sense of time. So, it came as no great surprise yesterday that I lost an hour. It had been 3 p.m. (15:00 hrs) when I last looked at the time on my computer. I'd stayed awhile longer to finish a segment of database design. Then, I set it aside to take Max for his late afternoon walk. By the time I had reached the front door, the time on the home alarm was reading 16:15. "Time flies!"

Now, my computer had corrected for British Summer Time (BST). I was certain of it. And, I could be sure that time hadn't had a second government-authorized "Spring forward". I apologized to Max for my preoccupation, my tardiness, leashed him up, grabbed the Flying Squirrel toy, and flew out the door. I thought nothing more of it until today. A few moments ago. Well, a few moments ago, when I began writing.

Max is in his post walk coma. Playing with Flying Squirrel can be tiring. I've noted the time as 16:15. "Deja vu!" It will kill me. Deja vu! I'll have a vision of my death; and, I'll die straight away. I know that the sense of having experienced something before proceeds from the likely fact that I have indeed done some precise thing before. Exactly as I'm doing it now. Whatever it may be. Having no sense of time ... Well, it plays tricks with time. But seeing the digits 16:15 two days in a row was putting the lie to this surety of Deja vu. Time was giving me a before and an after. Max eager to go. And, Max tired from having gone.

Nonetheless, it reminded me of yesterday's puzzle. How could I have lost an hour? It was then I found myself opening the database I'd been working on. I noticed that my backup was a bit old. -- Only 15 minutes, but I'm paranoid ... thanks to the cheeky tricks Microsoft Access had been playing on me before I dumped in to build in MySQL. So, I made a fresh back up. I noted that the time of both my working and backup files was the same. A sense of relief settled up me,

... Until I looked over at the computer's time clock; and, I was unsettled. The computer's clock was running an hour ahead of the time just marked in the file directory. It's odd -- isn't it? -- that the clock should have sprung forward with BST, whilest file directory time remained on Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). Whereas yesterday's ripple in time took an hour, today's seemed to be giving it back ... at 16:15 precisely!

The paranoid instinct wants to assert that I've probably been hacked. It's had that feeling recently ... though I know it to have been the result of a laser-mouse as it was dying. Before it was retired and replaced, it seemed to be possessed, moving where and doing what it pleased. One of the last things it did was to enter my photo-storage and execute a slide-show. As my life was flashing before its eye, I allowed myself to dispense with paranoid suggestion. Instead, ...

The poetic instinct offers a physics lesson. Ockham's razor, it suggests, is swinging. One hour to the East. Then, one hour to the West. Since my sense of direction, here, is 90 degrees off-cant, that's more likely one to the South and one to the North. As we embark upon British Summer Time, sun rises ever earlier, seemingly extending time. Max, who is my time-piece, threw himself in bed and began his morning "Get-out-of-bed-and-walk-me-now!" ritual when the clock -- the bed-side clock at least -- was reading 5:24 a.m. The sun, brightening the room as though it might have been the 10:24 a.m. of a Winter's day.

"Didn't I just go to bed three hours ago?" I asked him. "Let me sleep a while longer!" I added, pushing him off the bed. We'd stayed up late to catch an episode of The Walking Dead, consigning our last walk of the day to the black hours after the closing credits rolled. England and the dead of night go together like hand-in-glove. And, together, they do Zombie in the Night better than is done on the animated streets of Haiti after dark. (I know, I've walked the darkened night-streets of Port-au-Prince long after the US Embassy there advised would be safe.) England, as the night air warms, gives us the Living Dead, the homeless alcoholics who've missed the closing of the hostel-for-those-on-the-dole doors. They shuffle along aimlessly oblivious to the hour, some singing ditties slurred, sounding like the drowning man pulled to shore, coughing up the breath of fishes. 28 days. 28 hours. 28 minutes. Give me even 28 seconds of forethought later, together with the sounds of the house settling, ... and the fear that just one of them might have been a real Zombie left me long into the night unable to find sleep.

What time is it? Does it matter? If my computer desires to support two distinct but simultaneous frames of time, I don't care. BBC World Service radio does it. At the time of posting, it is 17:42 and 18:42 all together where I am. And, Max is hungry. It's (his) dinner time.