The Eclectic Interweb

Daylight saving started here yesterday… and ended in the UK (or is it the other way around?) anyway the clocks went forward by one hour. Went forwards everywhere… except that is, at our house.

Normally I’m up coughing with the sparrows resetting all the timepieces around the house to the correct time which as you will know from previous posts takes ages because the number of clocks runs well into double figures! This time, for reasons I can’t explain I didn’t do it. Obviously this led to certain interesting side effects.

For example, yesterday morning my youngest daughter was due to go to Jamboree for the day. We knew the trip was laid on but in our usual chaotic manner had neglected to sort out where the pickup point was and what time. We knew the ‘day’ was due to start in Warragamba at 10:00 a.m. and it took about an hour to get there… so we figured if we started at our own Guide Hut at 8:30 that should give us time to wait to see if anyone else turned up and allow us time to zoom over the an alternate one if not.

As it happened, we left a little earlier than planned… and arrived at our hut (by our clocks) at 8:10 a.m…. just as they were all piling into the cars to leave! That was when we discovered the clocks had gone forward and it was actually 9:10 a.m. Had we put the clocks forward it’s quite possible we’d have missed them entirely! Oops. 🙂

So off she went anyway and had a great day meeting up with her older sister and enjoying herself immensely.

Of course being a ‘day trip’, we were to be there at 5:00 p.m. to collect her and bring her home. Were we there? Well since I ask the question you can safely assume we weren’t.

We’d gone home and made yet another start on clearing up the mess ready for the ‘Great Car Boot Sale’ I’ve been meaning to have since last Xmas and again forgot entirely about correcting the time on any of the dozens of clocks littering the house.

At 4:30 p.m. I went downstairs and for some reason decided to have a look at my phone… which showed a message had arrived. Assuming it was from my eldest daughter I was in no real hurry to look, so sat down and did other things on the computer first. When I *did* look… I discovered it was from the youngest saying the people who’d brought her home from the Jamboree were wondering where we were. The message was timed at 5:20 p.m. and it took a few minutes more of dissonance before daylight dawned and we ran for the door!

Chaos ensued.

Off we raced to the Guide Hut… we arrived… and they’d left presumably to bring her down to our house. We raced home… accompanied by a flashing panel light and incessant beeping letting us know we were almost out of petrol.

We get home and discover in our absence the daughter had finally decided to call the home phone number and left two messages telling us she was at a friends house and could we collect her from there please.

In true farce style we tried to get there as quickly as possible before the petrol ran out. 🙂

I’ll pass over the lunacy of driving up a road that had been ‘cut off’ and diverted by roadworks… and (after finally collecting her with some embarrassment) the idiocy of a U-Turn on the road to get back to a petrol station a kilometre or so away when there was a suitable one a hundred metres or so away over the brow of a hill, but forgotten about until it was too late to turn back… and carry the story on a little.

We topped up the car and to round off the afternoon asked the daughter if she’d like a McDonald’s for dinner while we had a salad… of course she said yes so off she trotted to buy one.

Five minutes later the wife remembered she’d promised her a BBQ so ran in to get her before her order was processed and we drove off home for the first BBQ of the year… despite the cold and the rain we had all day!

Gosh I was **so** pleased to be out there doing the cooking. I’d suggested  waiting until *today* to have the BBQ so that we could share it with the eldest daughter who will be arriving home from Jamboree sometime today but of course I was ignored as usual. Charming!!  In fact they both said… no worries… you can do another one tomorrow!! Hah!!

Oh yes. I mentioned the eldest daughter was returning home from Jamboree. Guess what??

We have no idea at all either when she’ll be coming home… or where she’ll be arriving! Here we go again.

(by the way – despite updating a few of our timepieces there are *lots* still waiting their turn!!!)