Just back from 10 days walking and cycling in Scotland - catching up is taking some time, but I enjoyed this thread. A few snippets of my own:

Ebbie (28 Oct) suggested choosing your own time. A great idea - the villagers of Llangennith (Gower, west of Swansea) had the same thought. The extract below phrases the story better than I can.
QUOTE
Life in such a remote area as Llangennith produced an independent, perhaps arrogant people who considered themselves apart, not only from the rest of the peninsula, but from the rest of Britain as well. During World War I, when the government decided to introduce the daylight saving measure of putting clocks forward an hour during summer months, the villagers here had to hold a public meeting to vote whether they should follow suit. The outcome was that they should, but only on a one month trial.
ENDQUOTE

Bill D (28 Oct) reports a guy who carried two watches. Reminds me of a programme on Wainwright's books on the Lake District recently. A guy is updating some of the route information. He was interviewed, explaining that he didn't really trust electronics, so carried two identical GPS receivers. When he logged a point, if the two readings agreed, he accepted it as correct, and wrote it in his notebook! The interviewer asked what he would do if the readings disagreed. Easy, he said - I'd get the third GPS out of my pack and check against that. Talk about redundancy!

I like the various approximations from Peace - near enough is right! Back in the good old days of DOS, I had a computer technician who wrote a little program to display the time on his PC. He simply typed "TIM" at the prompt, and the computer responded with "It's nearly quarter to one" or "It's just gone four" - in text on screen, of course - no sound then. It was much more human than this digital nonsense.

Me? I haven't owned a watch for the last 15 years.

Oh, by the way - it's nearly coffee time!

Phil