Many things may be learned from reading, though admittedly not everything should be accepted as gospel truth.
Sometimes, though, you discover verifiable facts that you feel you ought to have known but somehow never did.
World War Two had been over for three years when I was born, but we lived in London where the evidence remained for a considerable time and although my parents did not talk of their personal war experiences, conversations often included the phrase:
“Before/during/since the war”
To some extent, rationing continued until 1954.
So, although I was very young, I always felt that I knew a bit about the war and much that I did not learn growing up, I read about subsequently.
But it was only two days ago that I read about something called British Double Summer Time.
Which was:
Time Zone: UTC+02:00 (during summer) and UTC+01:00 (during winter, vs standard GMT
World War II (1941–1945): Introduced to save coal and energy, and to give people extra daylight to get home before wartime blackouts. Clocks stayed one hour ahead of GMT all year round during winter, and two hours ahead in the summer.
Post-War (1947): Re-introduced for a single year during severe post-war fuel shortages and economic austerity.
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Certainly, it is not a matter of great importance, but how had I never heard mention of it before, either verbally or in any of the many war stories I’ve read?
Further, and far more surprising, since I worked for British Airways during this time period:
How was I not aware of this….
1968–1971 Experiment: The UK tested British Standard Time (keeping clocks at GMT+1 all year round), which was later dropped after protests from Scotland about dark winter mornings.
I joined BA in June, 1969 and those first years at JFK were spent running around herding passengers that arrived in a constant stream from various parts of the world, or queued to check-in for departure to same. All we checked was the time of arrival or departure in New York. The only other time that concerned us was GMT or Zulu Time which was how all our arrival and departure times were recorded. Local time in London seemed irrelevant.
Later on, when I became acquainted with Operations, it was another matter.
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Twice a year, there was a time change, both in the UK and in the States and God forbid they should occur on the same weekend.
In the autumn, they tended to happen a week apart, the UK putting their clocks back first, such that the time change moved from 5 hours to 4.
In the spring, there was often a gap of a month. Britain went ahead first, increasing the time change to 6 hours.
All of this information was readily available, so you would think the operation would take these discrepancies into account but there was a constant muddle over crew wake-up and pick-up times which could get very fraught.
Flight arrival times changed and if you forgot, passengers got misinformed, their bookings messed up. There were many complications during those periods.
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Airport work affected my nights. I often suffered from insomnia, but when I was able to sleep, I often had bad dreams. In one that was recurrent , I witnessed aeroplane crashes and I woke up screaming.
There were many tedious situations to deal with in an airport but the one I dreaded was having to handle the relatives of crash victims.
In the 38 years I served with BA, the possibility only arose once. It was not a BA flight, but one of the airlines we handled at JFK. Most of the passengers survived, but there were fatalities. However, as luck would have it, I was on vacation and not even contactable.
Visiting my parents in Florida, I watched the news in horror, feeling guilty and useless.
For a long time, after I retired, I continued to have airline dreams, though they did not wake me up, but in recent years they stopped. I thought perhaps that life had faded into the past.
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But then last night…I was (in my dream) supervising the overhaul of furniture and uniforms on a British Airways ship. (Yes, boat, not ‘plane.)
This was not going well, as the new furniture was simply being pushed in front of the old and we were a little short of space. At the same time, people were attempting to find uniform items that fitted and all in all, I was distracted, which was unfortunate because above deck, pirates had seized control.
A responsible person might perhaps have gone above to challenge the scoundrels, but as I was a coward. I urged my minions to depart quickly through a side entrance and presumably followed, since I next found myself on the dock watching as the ship sank by the bow, the pirates having proved hopelessly incompetent.
Contemplating the disaster, I thought it likely my employer would be put out.
It would appear not all my airline memories have faded.
Just got a bit muddled.
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