I haven’t spoken about Geoffrey for a while.
He’s my best friend, who now spends most of his time telling nurses of an occasion in 1968 – something about a football game he starred in, followed by an after-part he also starred in.
When I visited him the other day, he was talking to a spider that had made its way into his pokey room.
He – Geoffrey that is – was making all sorts of threats, telling the spider he’d seen it the day before, and if he ever saw it come back again he’d have to solve further arguments with bug spray.
All mouth. Geoffrey wouldn’t hurt a fly, let alone a spider. Just the type of nice guy he is, albeit these days hampered by dementia that leaves him wondering what he did five minutes ago.
One of Geoffrey’s cousins lives in Sydney, so we sometimes dial him into our conversation through Facetime on my phone.
On the latest occasion, it was around 6.30pm our time, 7.30pm Sydney time.
We all spoke the same language. We were all experiencing a similar sunset. And we were both thinking about what we were about to have for dinner.
The cousin was telling us how he’d taken the dog for a walk, visited the shops and would within two hours be heading off to bed.
The difference, not that Geoffrey gave a hoot, was that I was compelled to start my dog and shop routine an hour earlier at 4.30pm, whereas our Sydney counterpart had managed to fit it all in between 5.30pm an the time of the phone call.
I know at a retired age, we can adjust our day to suit the sun.
But I do recall as a working man how envious I was of our southern counterparts who were able to come home from a 5pm finish to be greeted by two hours of sunlight.
Our local parks would be filled with stressed folk, yanking on dog leads trying to encourage their mutt to stop sniffing and start walking, because dinner would be on the table sometime soon to satisfy whoever thought that dinner should be eaten in conjunction with the sun’s daily farewell.
Sure, we could all eat dinner later. But what then would we do during the extra hour of darkness between the walk and the food?
Our southern friends however, would – during the same time – be relaxed.
Their hounds would be walking at a natural pace, sniffing and peeing at their stress-free leisure, their masters not even bothering to check their watches as they stop to talk through the day with people they’d welcomed into a circle of friends.
Daylight saving just makes sense. It always did.
Surely scientists have worked out now that curtains won’t fade, and cows will work it all out to come home when they’re good and ready.
Joh Bjelke-Petersen isn’t here anymore to tell us we’d kill off the peanuts and other crops by giving everybody an extra hour of sun.
There was a referendum in 1992, two generations ago, in which 54% of people said they’d prefer to keep their old curtains.
But times have moved on since then. There are more people in the city now. Even people in regional areas seem to have their heads around the concept of common sense now.
Hey, Ms Queen P, you’re stressing out about youth crime, and cost of living, and housing, and all those other painful little things that distract your attention from the important meets and greets you need to be doing.
But I’ve got something that’ll help. Hold another referendum. Or don’t hold one at all. Just do it, dear leader. Just give Queensland what they rightfully deserve.
Allow them an hour in the afternoons to chill, to get life off their chest, to think happy thoughts while you work out all that other nasty nonsense.
Put sun into the Sunshine State, and instigate daylight saving so Geoffrey and I don’t have to agitate over our New South Wales cousin’s gloat.
Hey Geoffrey, wouldn’t it be nice if you were eating dinner while I was shuffling off to the carpark in time to see Wanda in daylight?
What’s that? You’ve got a spider on your wall? Right.
