Could You Tell Me The Time?

Northern Advocate, 8 January 1938, Page 5

Could You Tell Me The Time?

Throw away your clocks and calendars for a while and see how you manage.

You may bo able to exist in your seaside camp, or on your hunting trip, or your fishing tour, but you would not last long in the city or even in Whangarei. Most of us rely on clocks and calendars far more than we realise. Timekeepers have become an essential part of our social and business life. They tell us when to eat, when to start work, when to finish, when to go to bed and when to get up again.

Tragedy of Civilisation

That is one of the tragedies of civilisation. We don’t eat or sleep when nature wants us to, but when the clock hands point to the allotted time. You may go away for a week in the country and leave your watch behind. Consternation will result. Your wife doe-j not know when to put on the potatoes, and you do not know wdien to eat.

When you find that you have been getting up at 5 a.m., breakfasting at 6, and lunching at 10, the very thought shocks you. You haven’t had breafast earlier than 7.30 for years.

But you must’nt tell the chaps at the office how you got up so early. Have you ever thought how many times per day you look at a clock, or ascertain in other ways the time? It might surprise you if you cared to calculate. Everything we do is run to time, and even our hours of leisure are dictated to by the watches on our wrists. Tied To Strings of Mother Time. How many of your have glanced at the clock in the past 10 minutes? A good many. I guess. You will do/so a few more times before going to bed. You may be feeling tired, but the clock says it is only 7 p.m.. so you can’t go to bed. You’ll stay up a bit longer till the clock gives you permission. We are undoubtedly well tied to the strings of mother time.

. Baby is thirsty; nature prompts it to cry out for a drink; but no, the clock does not specify meal time. Nature must wait.

Then, of course, there is Monday morning. We don’t want to get up, but the clock says we must, and if we wait longer the whine of factory whistles tells us we've overstepped the mark and will have a red line under our names.

We go swimming and are geting on fine when mother says we’ve been in half an hour. What does it matter? We can still keep going and will stop when we feel we’ve had enough.. But no; the clock says we’ve had enough. Curse that clock!

Ruled By The Clock

We mustn’t be too harsh. Why shouldn’t wc count the seconds the same as we count the years, the months and the days? Business would be in a shambles if we did not have time-keepers. Even farmers could not regulate their milking time to catch the cream lorry if it wasn’t for clocks.

Yes, taking- it for all in all, we depend greatly on time-keepers for our social existence. We have done so far countless generations; flwe will do so for many more to come.

In fact, if it wasn’t for our calendars we wouldn’t be able to tell when New Year’s Eve came round, nor would the fire sirens and other noisy appurtenances know at what exact minute to bellow forth their midnight message if it were not for the secondtickers.