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[QUOTE=Varley;50914]Much to my guests annoyance all but the too-clever-by-half wireless clocks remain on GMT. Proper house time would be GMT less 14 minutes or thereabouts. To be that horologically pedantic would, of course, be ridiculous.
Before the railways were built, local time did indeed vary from town to town with noon being set from a convenient sundial in clement weather. So whatever one's chosen method of keeping track of the time, be it a clock linked to Rugby, a sonorous grandfather in the entrance hall, a chirping cuckoo device,a digital display winking on the microwave, oven or hot water boiler, or a mechanical masterpiece from the land of yodelling and cheese, they all owe their existence to the advent of the steam powered locomotive and a Victorian obsession with standardised accuracy.
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"You do not ask a tame seagull why it needs to disappear from time to time towards the open sea. It goes. That's all." Bernard Moitessier.
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