Final Word: About Time

Since we live in what the Chinese like to call ‘interesting times’ (although they tend to use it as a compliment – may you live in interesting times) it is possible to miss out on the important news stories which emanate each day from our trusted media outlets.

If one was a conspiracy theorist one might suggest this is done deliberately either to ensure that there is not a general population panic or to slip some piece of legislation or information past us ‘they‘ do not want us to know.

One such incident occurred last week, reported only for a short time on the RTÉ news app and then just as suddenly as it appeared, it was gone.

On Wednesday of last week the National Standard Authority for Ireland met and issued a statement that they would be making representations to government to persuade it to have co-ordinated universal time placed in legislation as the official time scale for Ireland. At the moment Ireland is a member of the Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) group but now this National Authority in Dublin wants this to be replaced with the more accurate atomic time scale in order to enhance time dependent infrastructure.

We should be clear that it is not a coincidence that these discussions are happening at a time when there is much talk of a united Ireland. The 1916 Rising may have brought political independence to Ireland but because the country stayed in the GMT it was locked into the UK for all the important aspects such as industry, travel and communication.

Allowing Ireland to leave the GMT will be the final act of independence; proof that England is finally no longer its master. We up here in the wee North need to have a word with the National Authority about that because it sounds suspiciously like behaviour up with which we will not put. A united Ireland is one thing but separate time zones is very much a different thing.

The fact that Ireland has a separate time zone also explains a good deal. We have all experienced that physical torpor which seems to come on us when we cross the border at Aughnacloy, that feeling of tiredness and lack of concentration as though one is almost existing outside of one’s own body.

At least we now know we are merely suffering from jet lag, and clearly the reason Aughnacloy is a town trapped in the 1950s is that it is marooned in the void between GMT and Irish time.

It also explains Fermanagh. I have never met anyone who does not point out that Fermanagh, and those who live there, have a definition and living experience of time which does not match that of anyone else in the North.

Often this can show itself in extremes where, for example, a colleague of mine has added her complete disdain for GMT with geographic obliviousness to the extent that the only way to get her anywhere on time is to collect her at her door and to tell her you are collecting her an hour earlier than you actually are.

Furthermore, if you visit any house in a county which borders directly on to Fermanagh is it not a strange coincidence that there is never a clock on the walls in these homes. I suspect they are taken down and hidden until those of us from GMT have left.

So as the great bard himself said, beware the ides of March, the month when the final vestiges of British rule in Ireland will mysteriously fade away while we in this abandoned place wander around directionless caught between a time we know and love and a galaxy somewhere far, far in the future.