Wyn Drabble: Canines don't tamper with time

Wyn Drabble

Dogs don't do daylight saving. No, you wouldn't find a canine tampering with time.

Breakfast time is breakfast time and dinner time is dinner time. No need for timepieces when you have a clockwork stomach built in.

So there was Madam Dog on the first morning of daylight saving sprawled out on her bed and showing no signs of stirring. After all, it was too early to worry about getting up and waiting by the food bowl. There was still a good hour to go.

Of course, it's a pretty big thing that humans do, messing with the grand temporal controller in the sky. You can't shift time, early daylight saving objectors must have said before they moved on to the curtain-fading argument. The world is flat, others must have protested. You could fall off the edge.

And the moon landing was faked!

Some used the old Indian explanation. Apparently a wise old Indian tried to explain the lack of logic in daylight saving with, "Only the government would believe that you could cut a foot off the top of a blanket, sew it to the bottom, and have a longer blanket,"

Yep, she was a pretty big job but we did it.

And as I write, Madam Dog is still sprawled on her bed waiting for her stomach to signal time, wondering why her parents are up and doing things before she feels officially hungry. I could even make it to the end of this piece before her stomach clock kicks in.

You realise how important time is every time you misplace your watch. I've misplaced mine several times and it was only then that I realised how much I depended on it. I'd keep looking at my wrist to find nowt but a freckle.

It's a curious thing indeed that, in an age when we are surrounded by clocks, we still come back to the wristwatch. I know the time is on my phone but I'm stubborn. That's not the version I want.

It's also on the car dashboard, the computer screen, the town clock, the stove. None of those tells the time the way a good old wristwatch does.

Recently the battery on mine ran out and I couldn't settle into a normal day until I'd made a mercy dash to a key-cutting stall and had the ticker replaced in my watch.

A wristwatch helps with punctuality and I'm a stickler for punctuality even though I'm not sure that I actually have a stickle.

As a teacher, I devised a rather original penalty for late pupils. I gave them two choices. Either they could write 100 times, "We don't DO late" – the DO had to be upper case and underlined - or the quicker and more entertaining option was to perform "We don't DO late" four times convincingly in a style chosen from the three genre options I offered.

These might include hip hop, country and western, opera, kapa haka or Congolese war dance. Fun and a lesson learned.

So, there you have it. I've just finished this piece and Madam Dog is now stirring and ready for her meal knowing nothing about the world's changed temporal status.

But you wait until the other end of this whole time warp when the clocks have to go back. For Madam Dog, at least for the first few days. it will be, "Where is my breakfast? It's high time I had it."

Time waits for no dog.

Aside from velcro, time is the most mysterious substance in the universe. You can't see it or touch it, yet a plumber can charge you upwards of $75 per hour for it, without necessarily fixing anything. (Dave Barry)

Wyn Drabble is a teacher of English, a writer, musician and public speaker.