Digested week: Sometimes it feels the clocks do nothing else but go back | Lucy Mangan

Monday

The clocks went back. So, overnight, something happened for reasons I’m no closer to than I was as a newborn half a century ago.

We receive warnings every year, and I dutifully follow the instructions on the two analog clocks in the house. (The car and the oven, like everyone else, have to fend for themselves until the time comes again in the summer months). Then I look at those two clocks, trying to understand what they mean. Is this the hour I get to spend an extra hour in bed, or the hour stolen from me? I know it’s going to get dark sooner rather than later, but that’s because I know it’s winter and that’s the way things work. But I don’t understand. I can’t really make the connection between what’s happening in the clocks and what’s happening outside. I follow a chain of thought and find it disconnected at both ends.

So twice a year, regardless of where the sun is, I grope in the metaphorical darkness, knowing what to do but never knowing why. It’s already a biannual (every six months? Therein lies another story) reminder of the fundamental absurdity of life.

Tuesday

Research has found that women use three times more exclamation marks in emails than men. I know right?!!!! The explanation is simple; Like most things (except turning the clocks back, which warms me up a bit) it’s because of the Mathematics of Sexism.

You know, like how it takes five years of “nagging” from a wife (sharing of basic intelligence) or a suggestion from a boyfriend to get a man to change his diet/minor behavioral issue? Or – let’s take it one step further!!!! – the testimony of nearly 30 women to convict a celebrity rapist? In fact, this is a less consequential manifestation of the same phenomenon. Women need to use three times as many exclamation points to be perceived as fair as men. In their case, this means they have to appear happy, docile, and friendly—a condition known, for inexplicable reasons, as natural femininity—in order to get their emailed messages across.

This is so frustrating. Sometimes you feel like the clocks are doing nothing but turning back.

Wednesday

Do you know what’s trending on social media right now? This – sorry, I just have to retch the oysters into a bucket in a way that is not Instagrammable. Oyster. People now love getting boogers on and off camera, and they’re acting like this isn’t the greatest perversion the internet has ever made possible in a crowded field.

Dear God, what’s going on? Have you ever seen, smelled or tasted an oyster? Then you know I don’t need to say more. For those who haven’t, do any of these for a picosecond and join us in our bone-deep disgust.

They claim to eliminate the meaty gray lumps because oysters are a healthy and sustainable way to get protein, Omega-3s and minerals. As if a zinc tablet wasn’t much more useful and appetizing. Too dry! Very neatly rounded! So it’s not a harmful bivalves! Why are you eating something with a valve??

Of course they actually do this because it’s a completely disgusting sight. The human eye and brain are a treacherous combination. Just as you cannot look away from a car accident, you are astonished when you see a human being with free will choosing to eat phlegm. I don’t know what to do about us, I really don’t.

Thursday

And yet. At least eating oysters is a closed loop; If you do something disgusting, I am disgusted. If you do something disgusting, I am disgusted. Repeat until one of us goes back to work. Another big trend among increasingly ambitious and entitled influencers is traveling to the Amazon rainforest, Asia and the Pacific to try to connect with the estimated 90 Indigenous tribes there who choose to remain isolated from civilization.

“All contact kills,” said a report by the charity Survival International, which advocates for the rights of tribal people. Pretty clear stance, but what’s the point of a few deaths and/or the complete decimation of a population by unknown pathogens compared to clicks, huh, Survival International? Have you thought about the survival of impressive ecology? If an idiot under 25 is prevented from doing anything, the ripples will spread far beyond him and soon there will be no content left to click on. And then everyone in the western world dies. Probably. Or something.

Friday

Halloween. Let’s all go as Prince Andrew, or rather Andrew. The Queen’s son has been stripped of his royal title and is being removed from the 30-room mansion of grace and kindness in Windsor Great Park, to which he has held strong despite previous efforts to remove him, following the escalating revelations and allegations regarding his relationship with convicted predator Jeffery Epstein and Epstein’s now-imprisoned pimp Ghislaine Maxwell. This week, it was reported that the Royal Lodge was where he hosted Epstein, Maxwell and Harvey Weinstein, months after an arrest warrant was issued for Epstein’s sexual assault of a minor. To be fair, who would want to leave a home with so many happy memories?

Anyway, the point is that, in his infinite lack of wisdom, everything he held dear – the titles, the money, the free house – is gone forever. He suffers in a way that we wish all our close friends and supporters of predators would suffer.