Standard Sanford

And his dirty little dingle…

It gets so dark so early these days.

It seems to be sucking the life outta me putting the chickens away so early.

If anyone’s to blame it’s Sir Sandford Fleming.

Fleming was a peninsular pounce who standardized time.

Standard time was invented by Haligonian Sir Sanford Fleming.

When we ‘fall back’ from Daylight Savings time we’re on Standard time as developed by Fleming.

So Fleming made this ‘standard time’ bullshit that’s making it dark so early.

Six days had passed - almost a full week without a tour!

We had our closing party (still no call from Hr so I guess I wasn’t embarrassing)

But that felt like ‘the end’

In the end, things don’t always work out as we’d like.

Take Fleming for example.

He built a big old tower that juts up above the north west arm of the harbour.

It’s a granite and ironstone tower.

Constructed as a distinguished memorial.

And its distinguished name?

The Dingle.

The Dingle?

It would be difficult to think of a more distinguished name for a tower than ‘The Dingle’.

Gene Autry could have sung to Standard Sanford: I’ve got turds that dingle dangle dingle as I go trotting merrily along…

The switch back to standard time really put me through a loop.

The ship was late and by the time we’d made our first trip up the Citadel, everything felt off, tired or wrong.

The ship was late and the time had changed. Two out of our three stops on the second loop around were closed dude to darkness.

And I was improvising with material.

I’m used to trying to keep a group for between an hour and an hour and a half at at time and have at lease three hours of material.

But twenty minutes with everything in odd places?

It was weird. My timing was a bit off and was editing my commentary on my feet.

Where do I put the jokes? How much history do I need to squeeze in over a twenty minutes long sesssion?

A couple loops and then we were done.

We spent the late afternoon chasing the sun.

There was a rainbow as we crossed the citadel - I told them it was coming and I delivered.

I guess even on a condensed tour there’s magic to be found.

Wood stove smoke dances in the air. Wet leaves and fresh earth scents underlie it all.

As we slide back to Sir Sanford Fleming’s standard time each day I seem to be chasing the sun.

During fall?

I live with the realization that I’ll never catch it - I just keep falling further and further behind.

Wiggle your piglets you porcine fools!