On The Changing of Clocks

So we have, once more, survived the annual rollercoaster that is the Going Forward Of The Clocks.  It is a time of year fraught with tension for WhyNotSmile, because, to be entirely honest, I get very confused by it.  I understand the concept, and I understand why we do it, I just get very confused the next day about where I should turn up and when.

Now, obviously, it is basically simple maths, which I should be good at, what with having a PhD in it and all, but it's one of those things that will not lodge in my brain, along with symmetry and following directions.

To complicate matters further, I often work with people in America, who put their clocks forward 2 weeks before us.  This spells only disaster for any scheduled meetings in the intervening time, so I admit it's something of a relief when we finally catch up.

Anyway, did anyone else think the time change wasn't publicised as much this year?  Normally you can't move for Huw Edwards reminding the nation to put their clocks forward on Saturday night, but this year... nada.  Maybe because we were all distracted by watching The Voice, a show so mundane that we can safely add the time spent watching it to the grand total of hours snatched from our very hands this weekend.


So, anyway, we've made it this far, and we're safe till October.

Back soon, with a summary of the excellent first week of The Apprentice.

On plurals

Here's a question which I have been considering for at least 3 minutes: is the plural of 'roof' still 'rooves'?

I ask because it strikes me that I haven't heard it used in a while, and maybe it's one of those things that everyone else has moved on from. On the other hand, I'm sure I've seen 'roofs' several times. I don't want to go throwing 'rooves' into conversation and end up being derided as a terrible fool.

In fact, I note autocorrect is fine with 'roofs', but has underlined 'rooves'. Is it possible that the plural was always 'roofs', and I've picked it up wrong and been living in error for 30 years?

Your help us appreciated.

Things That Baffle Me #4: Running For Pleasure, in Public

Now that summer is upon us, as it were, the streets are positively packed with joggers. This is a fetish I have never understood: why would grown adults run about in public, for pleasure?

As far as I can think on the matter, there are only two good reasons why I would ever run in public, neither of them pleasurable:

1. If there was something scary behind me and I wanted to get away from it:


2. If there was something in front of me that I wanted to get to quickly:


And apart from these I cannot think of any reason to run in public.

Things That Baffle Me: #3, Frequent Window-Cleaning

I read something in the paper today that disturbed me a bit. It was an advert for some window-cleaning stuff which is so good that you only have to clean your windows once a year.

It had never, and I mean Not Once, occurred to me to clean my windows more than once a year.

Things That Baffle Me: #2, British Optimism

So Terminal 5 has opened and blah blah blah it's been chaos. Bags have gone nowhere but missing, and half the nation has had to sleep on the floor at Heathrow. Foreigners are laughing at us and everyone thinks the person in charge should resign.

No surprises there. So why does everyone sound so shocked? Sunday's newsreaders were gasping that 'airport chaos has spilled over into a 4th day and shows no sign of abating'. Don't we know by now that what Britain does best is screw things up? Millenium Dome, Millenium Bridge, railway lines, all those stadiums...

The opening of Heathrow's Terminal 5 had all the ingredients for a disaster from the start:
1. It's in Britain
2. Half the country didn't want it anyway and couldn't wait for it to go wrong
3. It's an airport, so if/when it went wrong, everyone was going to notice
4. They said it was going to be brilliant
and
5. It involves BAA and British Airways, neither of whom could organise a piss up in a brewery.

I mention this because it highlights the rather endearing British trait that, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, we (they? - I think I'll excommunicate myself) still expect that it's going to work out this time. This is the trait that causes our clothes shops to be full of bikinis from mid-March to the end of August. It encourages our cafes to put chairs out on the pavement, and allows people to sit on them and believe they will be warm when the sun comes out, just as soon as this gale blows over. It makes each of the home nations believe that their little country will win the World Cup next time round. It is the trait that allows us to be excited about the Olympic games in London in 4 years' time, and which lets us futilely believe that it won't be the mother of all hash ups.

And it makes us announce that we're building a new terminal at our biggest airport, and to trumpet it for years in advance, instead of just building it quietly, opening it when no one's looking, and only letting the media in once it's been operational for a year and a half and the people in charge have got some kind of handle on how things are going to work.

It's a baffling trait, of course, and one has to wonder how it ever developed - a glance at the nation's soaps suggests that it certainly wasn't by over-exposure to any kind of optimism. Nor has it ever really reached Northern Ireland, where we suspect so strongly that there'll be a hack-up that we're almost disappointed when things work out as planned (which they usually don't - but since this is an excuse for drowing everyone's sorrows, no one really cares).

So I remain in a state of bafflement, and await the London Olympics with anticipation.

Things That Baffle Me: #1, Free Wallcharts in Newspapers

I am a grown up. Not an especially mature one, but a grown up nonetheless, and enough that I occassionally buy a newspaper. Am I alone in being mystified when they try to reward me for this by giving me a free wallchart of British Birds, or Famous Aircraft, or British Wildflowers, or Endangered Animals? I repeat: I who buy your newspaper am a grown up.

To whom do the newspapers think a wallchart of British Wildflowers might appeal? Let's begin our analysis by considering the entire British population (I say British, for this seems to be mainly a habit of Her Majesty's press; we may name and shame The Independent and The Guardian as two of the more violent offenders).

Presumably the people of Britain can be divided into two sections: those who are reasonably interested in British Wildflowers, and those who are not. Let us charitably assume that the former is the larger group; the latter we will consider no further. Of those who are at least reasonably interested, we can define two further subgroups: those who are interested enough to want a permanent, readily-available reference guide to British Wildflowers, with pictures and descriptions, and those who are not. I suspect that by this point we are into a minority population, although presumably still sizeable enough, if it's at the right price.

But now the paring down truly commences. Of that group, how many of them want that guide to be attachable to their wall, as opposed to being, say, a book for the coffee table? I would hazard a guess, not quite so many. And then we stray into the territory of the truly tiny subcategory: those who are interested in British Wildflowers to the extent that they would like a wallchart of the same, and who do not already own one. In other words, the not-just-nerdy-but-also-stingy.

And to this group cater the newspapers. How did they ever reach this decision? Was there a meeting somewhere at the head offices, where the guy in charge said "We're not shifting enough papers. How can we sell more with minimal effort and no expense?" and some bloke in Marketing said "I know! We'll find a specialist topic, in which a few people will have a passing interest, and we'll make a wallchart about it! People will flock to buy it!".

Of course, other suggestions have been tried: there are the interminable badly-produced DVDs of Hitchcock films and kids' shows. There are the coupons to save up to be redeemed (with £1.99) for a book ("worth £5.99!") at a shop which only has one branch in all of the North of Ireland (cost of book: £1.99 + 5 tokens which each cost 70p 'cos you have to buy the newspaper, plus 50p every day 'cos you can't resist a Dairy Milk once you get to the counter, plus £6.50 for the bus fare to and from Belfast to actually redeem said coupons, plus £3.50 for lunch and £75 for clothes because once you got into Belfast you thought you might as well make a day of it - total cost of book = £92.99. Unless you get there and discover you have one token less than you need, in which case you can leave off the £1.99 but you don't get the book. This is of little consequence since you realise afterwards that it's a kids' book and you read it for English class in first form.). There is a range of half-price tickets for admission to places in England; this works much in the same way as the book, except that it's much more expensive.

I don't want to be entirely cynical, though, because I have come across a few good free things in newspapers in my time. I'm a bit of a sucker for pull-out puzzle sections, for instance. Occassionally the DVD is worth having. Sometimes there are little recipe books, which tend to be a bit on the exotic side, but at least impress my parents (mind you, the last one I got was all about mushrooms: All The Different Types Of Mushroom You Can Get In Britain, And What To Do With Them. Come to think of it, maybe it was a wallchart folded up). A few weeks ago I ordered a Pilates DVD from The Times, for just the price of Postage and Packing. It arrived yesterday, but I haven't had time to try it yet. I suspect the results will not be good, but to be fair to The Times, they can't be blamed for sending it to Officially The Most Unbendy Person In The World, so I think I should not blame them entirely (I will of course let you know how it goes). And just yesterday, I got a free guide to The Origin of Species, which even includes an introduction from everyone's favourite scientist, Professor Dawkins.

So it is not all bad in the world of newspaper giveaways, but mostly it's not that great either, when you stand back and take a good long look at it.