Do you like it when the clocks go back? Do you relish the extra hour’s lie in and look forward to lighter mornings and dark cosy evenings?

I don’t.

Being a morning person, lie-ins, for me, are more of a punishment than a luxury. Promptly, at the new 5am, my eyes snapped open, and I had to lie there, wide awake and fretful, until it was a decent time to get up and start doing things. I couldn’t even switch the light on and read because it would have disturbed the peaceful slumber of my husband beside me. All through Sunday I had a feeling of dislocation in time, and we ended up having dinner at 5pm instead of 6pm because I had my timings all wrong.

Of course, it only takes a day or so to become accustomed to the new time. For those of us, however, who have pets which are attached to their specific feeding and exercise routine, it may take a little longer. Cats and dogs are unimpressed by their human’s obsession with clocks.

On Sunday, the moment I could get up and start making a cup of tea, I dashed downstairs and altered all the clocks, so at least they would all tell the same time. The one in the car, I left, because it’s traditional that car clocks should be an hour out for at least five months before one gets around to altering them.

We may not like the change from GMT to Summertime and back again, but none of us fight against it, do we? We just get on and adapt.

There are many things in our lives though, that we do resist and try to avoid adapting to. My mother, for instance, at eighty-six, refuses to have anything to do with the internet. She doesn’t have a smart phone, has no Wi-Fi or email address and insists that people get in touch with her by text, phone call or letter. It works surprisingly well for her. If she needs to buy anything online, I am always there to do it for her and I can make medical appointments for her online if that is what is required. I can see, however, that this is only going to get more difficult for her as fewer and fewer organisations are willing to communicate by post and will insist on email.

What do you try to resist, and why? Is it new technology? I don’t do Instagram or X or Tik-Tok and wonder if I should. Is it new clothing fashions, or fashions in food and drink (you just can’t get a Babycham these days), or embracing the inevitability of electric cars?

Very often, resisting something takes up more energy than going with the flow of fashion or learning the new technology. Sometimes we need to make the effort, like changing all the clocks so we can tell the correct time.

Except the one in the car, of course.

Mary

A Moodscope member