Christopher’s Manchester Weblog - Summer 2005 - Wednesday June 22 - Day 2 - Professors and Birds
Another update, this time from day 2 in Manchester
Wednesday marked my first full day in Manchester, which meant the joys of being awoken at 4am by the birds that don’t seem to realize that sunrise and time to wake-up are NOT the same thing. As short as the days are in the winter here, the summer days more than make-up for it.
I don’t know if you knew this, but the idea for daylight savings time came from an Englishman. Back in 1907 this man was up at dawn, overseeing deliveries, and realized that here was all this wonderful sunshine (as rare an English commodity as good teeth), and everyone was in bed instead of out enjoying it. So he proposed and parliament passed a change to the time, moving wakeup “time” back an hour. What it means in Manchester is that finally gets dark after midnight, which means that it doesn’t get dark here at all each day (does that make any sense?). Personally, in Colorado Springs I love daylight savings time…in Manchester I could only love it if given a slingshot to convince the birds to leave my window til a godly hour comes!
Actually, it is very weird to walk the city at night (as I do on my late night constitutionals) and see people out eating and drinking and talking, in outdoor cafes, at 10:30! The Brits really do love both their sunshine and their chance to celebrate. I do wonder though it all this late night activity explains why everything in the city seems to run a bit sloooowwww here in the summer.
So, I met with Dr. Noble, my erstwhile professor and mentor for my doctorate. He is currently reading for the first time the entire Pannenberg Systematics, so he was full of questions for me. I had mailed him the first four chapters a week ago Monday, which meant that they arrived here Tuesday about an hour after my lengthy trip from the airport ended. Got to love the postal system that says, “International Express - 2 to 4 days.”
