erithacus' saga: getting to grips with time and relativity

Getting to work at eight o’clock was tricky, especially after I bought a blanket from my first wages in a fit of wanton outsplashery. Lie-ins became tempting. If workers arrived five minutes late, their clock-in cards did not register their starting time until half an hour later. This meant losing twenty-five minutes of their “own time”. At twenty eight minutes past eight there was always a group of latecomers hanging around the warehouse entrance, enjoying a few minutes of their “own time” rather than handing it over freely to the company.

I learnt to calculate whether I was on time for my work by observing the people who were going to theirs. A woman with frizzy red hair would walk past the newsagent’s at ten to eight. That meant I would arrive with one second to go. There was always the chance she might be late, so I therefore needed another person to act as a time control. There were as many to choose from as there were people who did the same things at the same times every day. 1) man in white Jaguar at the traffic lights, 2) woman at the bus stop whose almost-finished cigarette indicated the bus was about to arrive, 3) man dressed in lab coat proficiently directing traffic at the junction near the railway bridge, and 4) kids (problematic in half-term) lingering on their way to school. Just in case, I bought a cheap alarm clock.