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<v Speaker 1>Hollo, I mokan stories all the time. Glad you are here.

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<v Speaker 1>Let's get into it.

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<v Speaker 2>I've counted every day since numbers began to matter to me,

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<v Speaker 2>a habit borne not from neurosis, but from an affection

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<v Speaker 2>for small, reliable things. A retired accountant may seem predictable,

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<v Speaker 2>but I take pride in it, even now, in my

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<v Speaker 2>late seventies. As I sit at my kitchen table in

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<v Speaker 2>my cottage, above sent broads firth, steam curling from my mug,

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<v Speaker 2>the window open to salt, air and gulls. I keep journals,

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<v Speaker 2>not fancy, leather bound tomes, sturdy a five notebooks, one

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<v Speaker 2>for every year since I set foot in this village.

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<v Speaker 2>Each page a neat account of the prior day's doings, weather, errands,

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<v Speaker 2>the flavor of jam on toast. The pages ground me

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<v Speaker 2>a countess into memories, small betrayals. Thursday morning began much

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<v Speaker 2>as always June suncheon caught the rim of my specters

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<v Speaker 2>as I spooned porridge, my hands steady for a man

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<v Speaker 2>my age. I fetched the latest book from its pile,

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<v Speaker 2>a blue note book, corners already softened and opened to

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<v Speaker 2>yesterday's page. Only there wasn't one Tuesday, June twelfth. My handwriting,

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<v Speaker 2>meticulous as ever, records a walk to the headland, a

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<v Speaker 2>sighting of oyster catchers, the minor victory of winning cribbage

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<v Speaker 2>at the pub. Then Thursday, June fourteenth, the empty lines

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<v Speaker 2>staring reproachfully. I turned the page with finger tips trained

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<v Speaker 2>by decades of working with bills and receipts, thinking I'd

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<v Speaker 2>skipped ahead. No, June thirteenth should have been right there,

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<v Speaker 2>and wasn't. At first, the mistake seemed so ordinary that

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<v Speaker 2>I barely paused. Perhaps a page stuck. I pinched the

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<v Speaker 2>binding and fanned the sheets. No missing leaves, no signs

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<v Speaker 2>of a torn stub. My custom is unwavering, never an

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<v Speaker 2>empty day, not even during flu, not for bereavements. My

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<v Speaker 2>journals bore silent witness to the sheer normalcy of time.

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<v Speaker 2>I paged back through the weeks to be certain, reassuring

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<v Speaker 2>myself with the unbroken chain from May into June. Mild

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<v Speaker 2>annoyance licked at my certainty. Perhaps I simply forgot nodded

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<v Speaker 2>off with the pen uncapped beside my elbow. Yet there

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<v Speaker 2>was nothing a blank day, not even a misstated note

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<v Speaker 2>in the margin or a cryptic to be filled, as

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<v Speaker 2>I sometimes leave when distracted. Refusing to indulge the creeping

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<v Speaker 2>sense of unreality, I slid open the drawer and checked

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<v Speaker 2>the in box, the basket where I tossed receipts and

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<v Speaker 2>notes before filing them each Friday. A slip from Tom's

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<v Speaker 2>village shop, time stamped fourteen June, lay atop the pile.

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<v Speaker 2>I frowned at the arithmetic. I last shopped yesterday, and

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<v Speaker 2>yet by the calendar, it should have been Wednesday. The

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<v Speaker 2>receipt's date was Thursday. My purse held no earlier slip.

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<v Speaker 2>I checked my phone. The last email was sent June twelfth.

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<v Speaker 2>The next June fourteenth. Old habits wore against confususion. I

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<v Speaker 2>took a breath, glanced out at the seas placid gray,

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<v Speaker 2>and shrugged inwardly. Had I slept an extra day, blanked

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<v Speaker 2>too many crosswords late into the evening, Still a blank

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<v Speaker 2>day in my life, precisely the sort of thing that

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<v Speaker 2>would have once kept me up recalculating, I didn't worry,

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<v Speaker 2>Not yet, Fascination pricked beneath the surface of habit. If

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<v Speaker 2>a routine so ironclad could fail, surely there must be

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<v Speaker 2>a reason, and if not well. Numbers only mean something

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<v Speaker 2>because they can surprise us. I left the page blank,

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<v Speaker 2>as custom demanded, but I left the pen uncapped beside it,

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<v Speaker 2>waiting for some detail to return. The sea was serene,

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<v Speaker 2>the light untroubled. Curiosity not anxiety, followed me down the

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<v Speaker 2>narrow path that morning, as if the village revealed some small,

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<v Speaker 2>peculiar smile. Let me introduce myself properly. My name is

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<v Speaker 2>Lionel Keel, retired twice widowed, too fussy for London, too

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<v Speaker 2>sentimental for most other places. Saint Broad's Firth sits on

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<v Speaker 2>the Cornish coast, carved from stone and salt winds, the

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<v Speaker 2>sort of place where people say morning but never hello,

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<v Speaker 2>and where if you lose your hat you'll find it

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<v Speaker 2>nailed to the pub's beam that evening for a pint's ransom.

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<v Speaker 2>I moved here twenty years ago, trading ledgers for horizon lines.

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<v Speaker 2>My cottage is the second on Church Lane, whitewashed, two

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<v Speaker 2>low stories garden tumbling toward the sea wall. I have

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<v Speaker 2>a kitchen filled with useful clutter, a table for cross words,

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<v Speaker 2>and shelves waited with the detritus of a steady life.

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<v Speaker 2>Perfectly sorted screws, summer hats, and the journals stacked chronologically.

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<v Speaker 2>My routines are almost ecclesiastical. Now breakfast at seven thirty,

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<v Speaker 2>a walk on the cliff path, rain or shine, lunch,

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<v Speaker 2>cheese and tomato most often, then correspondence or puzzles, a

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<v Speaker 2>cup of tea taken in the afternoon sun by the

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<v Speaker 2>garden wall. Most evenings, I join the regulars at the

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<v Speaker 2>first end, a pub more venerable than cheerful, and populated

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<v Speaker 2>like most village institutions, by people equal parts stubborn and kindly.

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<v Speaker 2>The village's social nervous system runs through a handful of characters.

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<v Speaker 2>There's Sheila, the postmistress, sharp as pepper, who holds every petty,

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<v Speaker 2>secret and errant package in memory. Alick is the fisherman,

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<v Speaker 2>face rudded by sun and wind, always on the water

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<v Speaker 2>at dawn, always able to tell you yesterday's catch by

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<v Speaker 2>weight and species. Tom owner of the only shop, insists

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<v Speaker 2>on hand written ledgers, despising electronic tills. Margaret, reliable custodian

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<v Speaker 2>of the library, keeps stories in both modern stacks and

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<v Speaker 2>stacks of ancient files, and possesses an amateur's lust for history.

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<v Speaker 2>Then there's doctor Whitby, semi retired dapper as old bank

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<v Speaker 2>clerks collecting trivial curiosities, the odd edged coin, the broken church,

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<v Speaker 2>weather vane, legends recounted over a pint. Saint Broad's birth

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<v Speaker 2>prides itself on its records, where the data is compiled

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<v Speaker 2>daily by habit rather than necessity. The Firth Times appears

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<v Speaker 2>each Thursday on blue paper, usually padded with anecdotes, plump

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<v Speaker 2>cod and warnings about sea fog. The parish church records

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<v Speaker 2>every birth, marriage and death in a ledger that predates

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<v Speaker 2>the railway tradition. Here is less belief, more elaborate punctuation.

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<v Speaker 2>We are not superstitious. If you ask about rituals, you'll

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<v Speaker 2>hear odd tales, ghostly ships, ill luck at Lammas, the

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<v Speaker 2>day one must never open a black umbrella inside. But

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<v Speaker 2>all told over pints, more for the pleasure of difference

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<v Speaker 2>than conviction, which is why on that mild Thursday, the

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<v Speaker 2>matter of the missing Wednesday felt like an itch, not

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<v Speaker 2>a wound. My first port of call, as with so

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<v Speaker 2>many village puzzles, was Sheila's bakery counter just after opening.

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<v Speaker 2>The bakery is a sanctuary of order, rows of loaves

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<v Speaker 2>in neat ranks, newspaper folded correctly, quasars cooling on racks.

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<v Speaker 2>Sheila greeted me with a nod, the local equivalent of embrace, morning, Lionel.

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<v Speaker 2>You're usual, yes, and bit of a silly question. I

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<v Speaker 2>seem to have forgotten to write my journal for yesterday,

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<v Speaker 2>entirely blank. Never done that, not in living memory. Can't

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<v Speaker 2>even call it a senior moment. Did you feel yesterday

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<v Speaker 2>was strange? She spread a layer of jam on a

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<v Speaker 2>half cut scone, Attention undivided. Honestly, feels like the weeks

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<v Speaker 2>just rushed by? Wasn't it just Tuesday? Tom, fetching rolls

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<v Speaker 2>for the counter, snorted, You're not the only one, mate, I,

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<v Speaker 2>honest to God, can't remember what I was doing yesterday either.

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<v Speaker 2>Feels like we blinked. Maybe the weather makes the days blend,

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<v Speaker 2>I offered, only partly convinced, Sheila wiped her hands and

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<v Speaker 2>reached for her phone and act as routine as buttering bread.

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<v Speaker 2>She scrolled through her calendar. See look, messages jump from

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<v Speaker 2>the twelfth to the fourteenth. Had a parcel due, but

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<v Speaker 2>that only arrived to day Royal mail. Eh Tom rummaged

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<v Speaker 2>under the counter, emerging with his battered log book. He

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<v Speaker 2>flipped to the relevant week, held it with the pride

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<v Speaker 2>of a man whose ledgers never lie. Tuesday twelve bread

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<v Speaker 2>order from Penzance, right on time. Then Thursday order again

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<v Speaker 2>with the new flower. There's nothing here for Wednesday. Like

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<v Speaker 2>I missed a day. A customer overheard, pausing mid bite.

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<v Speaker 2>Come to think of it, I meant to pay the

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<v Speaker 2>window cleaner, but I can't recall doing it. Wasn't it

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<v Speaker 2>raining Wednesday? Sheila shook her head. No, that was Monday?

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<v Speaker 2>Or was it? We began to laugh, a low tide

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<v Speaker 2>of amusement spreading outward. No fright, just the gentle surprise

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<v Speaker 2>of shared peculiarity. I pressed further, Sheila, your deliveries do

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<v Speaker 2>they reflect the same? No gaps? No Wednesday. She scrolled

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<v Speaker 2>her emails. Nothing, no notes, even the couriers tracking skips

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<v Speaker 2>to to day's date. Computer error. Maybe Tom shrugged, world's

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<v Speaker 2>gone mad. We'll blame Brexit. Next it grew contagious. Half

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<v Speaker 2>the shop joined in, searching phones and shopping lists. Not

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<v Speaker 2>one could name a thing done the previous day. No

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<v Speaker 2>one was troubled. If anything, the strangeness seemed to animate

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<v Speaker 2>the familiar walls. Everyone slightly brighter eyed, as if glimpsing

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<v Speaker 2>a ripple in still water outside. Gulls called unnoticed. I

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<v Speaker 2>wrapped my loaf in wax paper, mind whirring. If it

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<v Speaker 2>was a joke, it was shared by all. If a mistake,

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<v Speaker 2>it was unreasonably uniform. The receipt in my pocket felt heavier. Thursday,

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<v Speaker 2>June fourteenth, printed in ink, a certainty unmoored from experience.

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<v Speaker 2>By now, curiosity had become directional, not vague. The blank

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<v Speaker 2>day nagged me with its quiet assertion of never happened.

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<v Speaker 2>I resolved, as all good accountants do, to check the numbers.

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<v Speaker 2>Alick was easy to find, his boat bobbed by the

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<v Speaker 2>tide wall, weathered hull, glinting sun. When I found him,

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<v Speaker 2>he was checking nets for repairs, hands gummy with tar. Alick,

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<v Speaker 2>I called, how was your Wednesday? He spat into the sea,

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<v Speaker 2>couldn't say, feels like I just put these nets out?

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<v Speaker 2>Any chance you keep logs? Of course, like to know

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<v Speaker 2>if I'm losing nets or gaining bills. He scrambled into

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<v Speaker 2>the wheelhouse and fetched a spiral notebook and a creased

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<v Speaker 2>digital print out. You want Tuesday's catch six kilos mackerel,

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<v Speaker 2>two crab, fair breeze, Thursday, same but heavier fog Wednesday.

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<v Speaker 2>He turned the page, frowned and showed me Tuesday's log,

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<v Speaker 2>then Thursday dates stamped and signed, but no sheet for Wednesday.

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<v Speaker 2>On the GPS print out date, a mirrored Tuesday's course,

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<v Speaker 2>duplicated cat whether even repairs glitch maybe must have been

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<v Speaker 2>on the water. Can't recall a thing, he said, unconcerned,

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<v Speaker 2>bit odd, that not frightened. Alex seen worse than odd.

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<v Speaker 2>But his tape looped Wednesday out of existence. Sinking with mine,

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<v Speaker 2>I made a plan test each thread. At home, I

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<v Speaker 2>opened Internet banking, no transactions for Wednesday. I checked Firth Times.

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<v Speaker 2>Margaret's library had the latest issues. So I walked up

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<v Speaker 2>the hill. Margaret Gray curls pinned up, sat with an

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<v Speaker 2>armload of history books. Her reading glasses weighed down her nose. Actually,

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<v Speaker 2>she said, you're the third to ask. I thought our

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<v Speaker 2>printer missed a delivery. Issue jumps from Tuesday to Thursday.

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<v Speaker 2>I don't remember collecting papers for Wednesday at all. Perhaps

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<v Speaker 2>it was a holiday. I forgot. Have you checked the archives?

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<v Speaker 2>She led me to the back, where copies lined shelves

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<v Speaker 2>in blue folders, date spined and dusty June twelfth, then

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<v Speaker 2>June fourteenth, every year as far as she could see.

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<v Speaker 2>I pressed on my phone sleep tracker showed no rest

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<v Speaker 2>for June thirteenth, as if I shut my eyes on

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<v Speaker 2>one date and woke to the next. My smart home logs,

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<v Speaker 2>usually reliable for gilt tripping me about late night lights,

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<v Speaker 2>made the same leap kitchen lights off at ten zero

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<v Speaker 2>one p m twelve June. Next switch on six forty

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<v Speaker 2>five a m. Fourteen June. No entries for thirteenth. The

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<v Speaker 2>met office app offered another twist. Saint Brouard's Firth's local

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<v Speaker 2>station provided real time data normally, but for June thirteenth,

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<v Speaker 2>every value was listed as the same as for maintenance

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<v Speaker 2>down times, yet there d be no outage message. I

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<v Speaker 2>began to canvas neighbors, only slightly self conscious about this

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<v Speaker 2>unusual investigation. Margaret's reading log, which never misses a day,

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<v Speaker 2>showed a jump. She said, I can't even fake a man.

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<v Speaker 2>I was meant to be reading Emma that week. I

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<v Speaker 2>finished it in what my diary says was one day.

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<v Speaker 2>Never read Austin so fast. On my way out, I

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<v Speaker 2>met doctor whitby heading to his surgery. A battered gladstone

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<v Speaker 2>bag swinging Lionel off to solve the case of the

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<v Speaker 2>lost Wednesday, among other ailments. I replied, would you humor

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<v Speaker 2>me check your appointment logs? He invited me into the

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<v Speaker 2>cramped waiting room, already smelling of antiseptic. The computer displayed

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<v Speaker 2>Tuesdays and Thursday's schedules, no appointments, calls, or even automated

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<v Speaker 2>reminders for Wednesday. That's not a thing that happens. I

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<v Speaker 2>have the world's most irritating system, not designed to skip days.

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<v Speaker 2>But here we are, clean gap, no error. On the

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00:13:49.000 --> 00:13:53.480
<v Speaker 2>village WhatsApp group, the conversation was livelier, but just as inconclusive.

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<v Speaker 2>Someone started a meme congrats on making it to Thursday,

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<v Speaker 2>since Wednesday's off. A local student rift about Groundhog Day,

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<v Speaker 2>but without the endless loop, just a vanished square on

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<v Speaker 2>the calendar. Jokingly, several said lucky we didn't schedule the

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00:14:09.039 --> 00:14:12.679
<v Speaker 2>wedding for then. At the Firth's end that evening, the

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00:14:12.759 --> 00:14:16.559
<v Speaker 2>topic was impossible to avoid. By the second pint, every

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<v Speaker 2>regular agreed not a one could say for sure what

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<v Speaker 2>happened on June thirteenth. No one could recall a birthday,

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<v Speaker 2>an appointment, even a small disaster. Alec prophesied with a wink,

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<v Speaker 2>if that day's gone, maybe we're owed one back at Christmas.

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<v Speaker 2>Jollity failed eventually because there was nothing to be done.

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<v Speaker 2>Some argued it was a system's bug, one more thing

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<v Speaker 2>to blame on technology. Others said it's the weather always

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00:14:44.320 --> 00:14:48.159
<v Speaker 2>confuses the mind. Margaret wondered if the whole thing was

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00:14:48.279 --> 00:14:51.879
<v Speaker 2>just group inertia. What was most striking was that even

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<v Speaker 2>the teenagers, who had no reason to care for puzzles

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00:14:54.840 --> 00:14:59.080
<v Speaker 2>older than Snapchat, admitted, almost shyly, that they could neither

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<v Speaker 2>create nor bo morrow, a memory for the missing day,

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00:15:02.519 --> 00:15:06.399
<v Speaker 2>as if, when prompted, the entire village leaned together and

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00:15:06.440 --> 00:15:10.879
<v Speaker 2>saw only a smooth, inexplicable gap. I thought it merely

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<v Speaker 2>an odd, clerical quirk, a journal entry missed in the

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00:15:14.320 --> 00:15:18.120
<v Speaker 2>shuffle of old age and routine. Now it felt larger,

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<v Speaker 2>as if the fabric of ordinary life had loosened along

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<v Speaker 2>a hidden seam and refused to tell me whether the

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00:15:24.279 --> 00:15:28.279
<v Speaker 2>thread was truly gone or merely out of sight. By

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00:15:28.279 --> 00:15:31.240
<v Speaker 2>the next morning, my blank page was no longer an

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00:15:31.279 --> 00:15:35.519
<v Speaker 2>amateur error, but a portal yet a mind, trained by

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00:15:35.559 --> 00:15:39.200
<v Speaker 2>decades of audits, does not stop at shard befuddlement. Every

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00:15:39.240 --> 00:15:43.000
<v Speaker 2>anomaly invites a test. If no one could remember Wednesday,

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<v Speaker 2>what about things that cannot forget? Plants, animals, the relentless

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00:15:47.759 --> 00:15:52.480
<v Speaker 2>physical world. I keep sunflowers every year, a little ritual

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00:15:52.519 --> 00:15:56.600
<v Speaker 2>transplanted from my late wife's garden. This summer's plant stood

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00:15:56.639 --> 00:16:00.440
<v Speaker 2>hip high by the garden wall. Each day's progress documented

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00:16:00.519 --> 00:16:04.600
<v Speaker 2>in photographs, which I send to my granddaughter. I scrolled

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00:16:04.600 --> 00:16:09.759
<v Speaker 2>back through my phone, matching dates. Tuesday's image, petals just

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00:16:09.799 --> 00:16:14.799
<v Speaker 2>beginning to unfurl, stems still leaning. Thursday flower wide, golden

245
00:16:14.840 --> 00:16:18.600
<v Speaker 2>crown pushed farther open, a good two days difference. The

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00:16:18.679 --> 00:16:22.159
<v Speaker 2>time lapse widget agreed no photo for Wednesday, but the

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00:16:22.240 --> 00:16:25.200
<v Speaker 2>change between frames too great to be explained by a

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00:16:25.240 --> 00:16:29.639
<v Speaker 2>single day. Seeking comparison, I trundled up the lane to

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<v Speaker 2>missus Francis, renowned for her sharp tongue and sharper rose garden.

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<v Speaker 2>She was kneeling by her peace shoots as I entered,

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<v Speaker 2>brushing earth from her hands. Francis, do you mind if

252
00:16:41.639 --> 00:16:46.600
<v Speaker 2>I ask how did your garden fare yesterday? She stood back, creaking,

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00:16:47.200 --> 00:16:49.840
<v Speaker 2>Why you'll laugh? I came out this morning and found

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00:16:49.879 --> 00:16:52.759
<v Speaker 2>the peas nearly doubled. Could have sworn it was only

255
00:16:52.799 --> 00:16:56.519
<v Speaker 2>a day since I watered last. Security cam shows nothing,

256
00:16:56.919 --> 00:17:00.320
<v Speaker 2>just still images. Then fast forward. I'd have bled aimed

257
00:17:00.320 --> 00:17:04.519
<v Speaker 2>the fairies years ago. She showed me the camera's footage,

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00:17:04.839 --> 00:17:08.039
<v Speaker 2>a smooth reel except for June thirteenth, where the date

259
00:17:08.160 --> 00:17:13.200
<v Speaker 2>simply skipped plants leaping in size. She tutted with theatrical indignation,

260
00:17:14.039 --> 00:17:17.519
<v Speaker 2>Roses don't do time travel, Lionel, not in this soil.

261
00:17:18.640 --> 00:17:21.680
<v Speaker 2>Back on the key, I found Alec gutting his morning's

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00:17:21.720 --> 00:17:26.519
<v Speaker 2>catch under a tarpaulin. He smirked as I approached, checking

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<v Speaker 2>for time anomalies in the fish, Are you? He teased,

264
00:17:30.599 --> 00:17:34.519
<v Speaker 2>In fact, yes, can I see the scales? We examined

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00:17:34.519 --> 00:17:38.400
<v Speaker 2>the skip jack and cod, checking for signs of aging scales,

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00:17:38.519 --> 00:17:42.359
<v Speaker 2>color texture. They all bore a day's extra growth, more

267
00:17:42.359 --> 00:17:47.000
<v Speaker 2>than he'd expect. Maybe the whole village slept in, Aleck said,

268
00:17:47.240 --> 00:17:53.400
<v Speaker 2>not Unkindly. The Council's CCTV records, normally continuous, were revealed

269
00:17:53.400 --> 00:17:56.680
<v Speaker 2>by Tom's teenage son to have a quirk. From midnight

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<v Speaker 2>June twelfth to twelve zero one a m June five, fourteenth,

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00:18:00.759 --> 00:18:05.279
<v Speaker 2>The files skipped the naming convention, simply leapt forward a

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00:18:05.319 --> 00:18:10.079
<v Speaker 2>continuous system as automated as breathing at the weather station.

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00:18:10.519 --> 00:18:15.400
<v Speaker 2>The rainfall, gage, and wind sensors, both mechanical and electronic records,

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00:18:15.759 --> 00:18:20.319
<v Speaker 2>suffered the same blackout as the Met Office's website. By now,

275
00:18:20.359 --> 00:18:24.240
<v Speaker 2>my mind, by turns skeptical and delighted, reached the obvious

276
00:18:24.240 --> 00:18:28.200
<v Speaker 2>and pass if memories falter and records can glitch. What

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00:18:28.279 --> 00:18:31.559
<v Speaker 2>of the sunflower, the plants, the wind, the fish. What

278
00:18:31.640 --> 00:18:35.480
<v Speaker 2>about systems that are supposed to run without interruption by design?

279
00:18:36.000 --> 00:18:40.000
<v Speaker 2>Why would they too show a lacuna. Physical law does

280
00:18:40.039 --> 00:18:43.799
<v Speaker 2>not care for local tradition. Plants do not consult calendars,

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00:18:44.359 --> 00:18:47.599
<v Speaker 2>rain does not take a holiday. And yet even the

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00:18:47.680 --> 00:18:50.759
<v Speaker 2>humble growth of a peace shoot, the time lap's image,

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00:18:50.920 --> 00:18:55.359
<v Speaker 2>the data logger all agreed with human faults. The only

284
00:18:55.440 --> 00:18:58.079
<v Speaker 2>explanation that made sense, and it did not make much,

285
00:18:58.440 --> 00:19:01.480
<v Speaker 2>was a total village wide loss, a skipping not just

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00:19:01.519 --> 00:19:05.079
<v Speaker 2>of mind, but a physical record, an absence too total

287
00:19:05.119 --> 00:19:09.759
<v Speaker 2>for ordinary explanations. Clerical error would leave a trace, a note,

288
00:19:09.920 --> 00:19:13.640
<v Speaker 2>a glitch, even an error code. Here there was only silence.

289
00:19:14.079 --> 00:19:16.839
<v Speaker 2>Even the grass seemed to have grown by two days worth,

290
00:19:17.079 --> 00:19:21.279
<v Speaker 2>as if time had slipped by, unnoticed and unprotested. I

291
00:19:21.319 --> 00:19:24.519
<v Speaker 2>spent the afternoon back at the pub, absentee, minded, my

292
00:19:24.640 --> 00:19:29.920
<v Speaker 2>pint barely touched the others. Curious but pragmatic, soon moved

293
00:19:29.920 --> 00:19:33.039
<v Speaker 2>on to football and family gossip, returning to the world's

294
00:19:33.079 --> 00:19:36.319
<v Speaker 2>familiar pleasures. But a knot had formed at the center

295
00:19:36.359 --> 00:19:41.480
<v Speaker 2>of my curiosity, drawing in even the smallest detail. That evening,

296
00:19:41.559 --> 00:19:44.359
<v Speaker 2>I stood on my garden path, the air, sweet with

297
00:19:44.440 --> 00:19:46.920
<v Speaker 2>the scent of sun warmed earth, and for the first

298
00:19:46.920 --> 00:19:50.279
<v Speaker 2>time since my accountant's heart learned to calculate risk, I

299
00:19:50.319 --> 00:19:53.759
<v Speaker 2>felt a sense not of worry, but of invitation. If

300
00:19:53.799 --> 00:19:57.799
<v Speaker 2>the village's clocks and calendars, plants and people all colluded

301
00:19:57.839 --> 00:20:00.240
<v Speaker 2>in erasing a day, then there was a pas and

302
00:20:00.279 --> 00:20:04.359
<v Speaker 2>here strange as any that numbers could show. Was it

303
00:20:04.440 --> 00:20:08.400
<v Speaker 2>an accident, an inherited tradition, some trick of psychology so

304
00:20:08.559 --> 00:20:13.200
<v Speaker 2>powerful it infected machines and biology alike. Or something stranger,

305
00:20:13.559 --> 00:20:17.839
<v Speaker 2>an affliction, a trick, a miracle no one feared. The

306
00:20:17.880 --> 00:20:20.920
<v Speaker 2>next morning, I resolved to approach not just as an auditor,

307
00:20:21.160 --> 00:20:24.359
<v Speaker 2>but as a student of the impossible. I summoned a

308
00:20:24.400 --> 00:20:28.960
<v Speaker 2>meeting at the Firth's End, inviting Margaret Alick, Sheila Tom,

309
00:20:29.119 --> 00:20:32.559
<v Speaker 2>doctor Whitby and any who would come, promising only a

310
00:20:32.599 --> 00:20:37.000
<v Speaker 2>discussion of the lost day. Pub gatherings here are less assembly,

311
00:20:37.319 --> 00:20:41.680
<v Speaker 2>more overlapping conversations, cups of tea pressed against lips, boots

312
00:20:41.759 --> 00:20:45.640
<v Speaker 2>thumping on old boards. By noon, a half dozen curious

313
00:20:45.720 --> 00:20:51.920
<v Speaker 2>sorts had squeezed around the largest table, three generations, teachers, tradesmen, farmers,

314
00:20:52.200 --> 00:20:54.559
<v Speaker 2>a visitor from Yorkshire bunking in the b and B

315
00:20:55.160 --> 00:21:00.920
<v Speaker 2>eyes bright with outsiders anticipation to avoid accusations, theft I

316
00:21:01.000 --> 00:21:04.680
<v Speaker 2>bought the first round. I began with the question all

317
00:21:04.720 --> 00:21:07.880
<v Speaker 2>had been sidling toward how much can we rely on

318
00:21:07.920 --> 00:21:10.759
<v Speaker 2>our sense of time if it can simply be erased,

319
00:21:11.039 --> 00:21:14.000
<v Speaker 2>not just from memory, but from every kind of record.

320
00:21:15.160 --> 00:21:18.720
<v Speaker 2>Margaret had brought the parish registers, centuries old and heavy,

321
00:21:19.160 --> 00:21:24.400
<v Speaker 2>along with folders of typed pages from the Firth Times archives. Look,

322
00:21:24.640 --> 00:21:28.160
<v Speaker 2>she said, flipping pages with care. It's not just this week.

323
00:21:28.519 --> 00:21:32.079
<v Speaker 2>I checked back. Every year June thirteenth is either missing

324
00:21:32.200 --> 00:21:37.319
<v Speaker 2>or replaced by a note no record. Alec Grinning produced

325
00:21:37.359 --> 00:21:41.079
<v Speaker 2>his latest GPS logs and an old hand written fishing

326
00:21:41.119 --> 00:21:45.720
<v Speaker 2>tally from his grandfather's youth. Neither show anything for the thirteenth.

327
00:21:46.359 --> 00:21:48.960
<v Speaker 2>My father used to say, if a day could be lost,

328
00:21:49.240 --> 00:21:53.240
<v Speaker 2>it'd be that one. Tom, rolling his eyes, placed the

329
00:21:53.240 --> 00:21:56.480
<v Speaker 2>week's counter log for the group. I'd never skip a day.

330
00:21:56.599 --> 00:21:59.680
<v Speaker 2>Tightest ship in Cornwall, this shop, But for the past

331
00:21:59.680 --> 00:22:03.240
<v Speaker 2>fifth eighteen years, not a sail, not a delivery, not

332
00:22:03.359 --> 00:22:08.359
<v Speaker 2>a squiggle for June thirteenth, Doctor Whitby offered, the patient

333
00:22:08.400 --> 00:22:11.599
<v Speaker 2>lists are flawless, but empty for that day every year,

334
00:22:12.319 --> 00:22:16.480
<v Speaker 2>Never an appointment, no calls, nothing entered by hand or computer,

335
00:22:17.079 --> 00:22:20.000
<v Speaker 2>not just last week, every year since I came back

336
00:22:20.039 --> 00:22:24.720
<v Speaker 2>in nineteen eighty nine. The holiday maker piped up his diary,

337
00:22:24.920 --> 00:22:28.240
<v Speaker 2>kept long time for walking holidays, also skipped the date,

338
00:22:28.640 --> 00:22:32.240
<v Speaker 2>a blank line graduating straight from June twelfth to fourteenth,

339
00:22:32.559 --> 00:22:36.279
<v Speaker 2>even as his phone snapped photos at both ends. Thought

340
00:22:36.319 --> 00:22:40.440
<v Speaker 2>I d made a soppy error, he muttered. Sheila, who

341
00:22:40.519 --> 00:22:43.839
<v Speaker 2>had quietly called her cousin in Plymouth, relayed an answer.

342
00:22:44.400 --> 00:22:47.599
<v Speaker 2>Those outside the village had normal weeks, but even a

343
00:22:47.640 --> 00:22:51.680
<v Speaker 2>delivery driver passing through recorded June thirteenth as a no

344
00:22:51.880 --> 00:22:56.599
<v Speaker 2>movement day on their dash camp. Margaret quietly said it's

345
00:22:56.640 --> 00:23:00.359
<v Speaker 2>not just the records. My grandmother always called it leap Day,

346
00:23:00.720 --> 00:23:03.960
<v Speaker 2>but wasn't that for February? She'd say, when there's nothing

347
00:23:04.000 --> 00:23:09.039
<v Speaker 2>to do, the day never arrives. We agreed, by nobody's heroics,

348
00:23:09.279 --> 00:23:13.279
<v Speaker 2>but by strange consensus that this omission crossed more boundaries

349
00:23:13.359 --> 00:23:19.000
<v Speaker 2>than any could easily explain, human, mechanical, digital, biological. All

350
00:23:19.039 --> 00:23:23.279
<v Speaker 2>records stopped for June thirteenth and started again unflustered. No

351
00:23:23.359 --> 00:23:26.119
<v Speaker 2>one could supply a credible story for even a single

352
00:23:26.160 --> 00:23:29.240
<v Speaker 2>event on that date, nor evidence for it passing as

353
00:23:29.279 --> 00:23:34.799
<v Speaker 2>anything but silent, unnumbered time. The explanations provided at first

354
00:23:34.839 --> 00:23:39.960
<v Speaker 2>were pragmatic. Some suggested mass forgetfulness, group hysteria, some unknown

355
00:23:40.279 --> 00:23:45.000
<v Speaker 2>but dull systemic bug. Others posited a local tradition habits

356
00:23:45.000 --> 00:23:49.519
<v Speaker 2>so old it infected device and memory alike. The youngest attendees,

357
00:23:49.960 --> 00:23:53.559
<v Speaker 2>less vested in routine, made less noise, but admitted in

358
00:23:53.599 --> 00:23:57.720
<v Speaker 2>the end they too could recall nothing. A teacher, young

359
00:23:57.799 --> 00:24:01.680
<v Speaker 2>and skeptical, asked, what if we're imposing this, like if

360
00:24:01.680 --> 00:24:05.000
<v Speaker 2>everyone believes there's no Wednesday, then the brain may be

361
00:24:05.160 --> 00:24:10.720
<v Speaker 2>even machines tuned to the pattern, self fulfilling prophecy doctor

362
00:24:10.759 --> 00:24:14.160
<v Speaker 2>Whitby counted, but what of the plants, the weather station,

363
00:24:14.680 --> 00:24:18.599
<v Speaker 2>the things that don't know Wednesday from a bucket? Nobody

364
00:24:18.759 --> 00:24:23.079
<v Speaker 2>had a satisfactory answer. Margaret gazed down at her hands,

365
00:24:23.119 --> 00:24:26.319
<v Speaker 2>then at me. It's always been so we forgot to

366
00:24:26.400 --> 00:24:30.319
<v Speaker 2>notice that we forgot now what. The mood was not

367
00:24:30.480 --> 00:24:34.680
<v Speaker 2>fear but wonder, disquiet, woven with the gossamer lightness of

368
00:24:34.720 --> 00:24:38.799
<v Speaker 2>something discovered rather than suffered, as if for the first

369
00:24:38.839 --> 00:24:42.079
<v Speaker 2>time in many years, the village had a collective secret,

370
00:24:42.240 --> 00:24:46.799
<v Speaker 2>difficult to dismiss as mere mischief or memory's trick. For me,

371
00:24:47.000 --> 00:24:50.160
<v Speaker 2>there was no comfort in the ordinary explanations, nor any

372
00:24:50.279 --> 00:24:55.960
<v Speaker 2>satisfaction in panic. My curiosity, long dulled by routine, sharpened

373
00:24:56.000 --> 00:24:59.960
<v Speaker 2>itself on this impossible contradiction. The gap was not absence

374
00:25:00.200 --> 00:25:03.960
<v Speaker 2>but invitation, a puzzle that grew, not shrank, as more

375
00:25:04.000 --> 00:25:09.640
<v Speaker 2>evidence arrived. As the others drifted into conversation about the weather, football,

376
00:25:09.759 --> 00:25:14.599
<v Speaker 2>and futures, I sat quietly with Margaret and Alec. I think,

377
00:25:14.759 --> 00:25:17.720
<v Speaker 2>I said, this is not merely a clerical phenomenon, nor

378
00:25:17.759 --> 00:25:21.240
<v Speaker 2>only psychological. If it touches the days and the daisies,

379
00:25:21.480 --> 00:25:24.880
<v Speaker 2>If plants, devices, sky, and weather all leap in synchrony.

380
00:25:25.240 --> 00:25:28.119
<v Speaker 2>Then we must look deeper. There may be cause, or

381
00:25:28.200 --> 00:25:32.039
<v Speaker 2>accident or something else. Entirely. We'll need the old records,

382
00:25:32.319 --> 00:25:37.440
<v Speaker 2>not just last year old ones. The village archives, Margaret nodded,

383
00:25:37.599 --> 00:25:41.880
<v Speaker 2>energized the rare document's room back of the library. It'll

384
00:25:41.880 --> 00:25:44.680
<v Speaker 2>be dusty, but it might give us leads. When do

385
00:25:44.759 --> 00:25:48.559
<v Speaker 2>you want to begin as soon as possible? I replied,

386
00:25:49.000 --> 00:25:54.279
<v Speaker 2>before another Wednesday slips past. Alick winked, if it's too much,

387
00:25:54.519 --> 00:25:57.599
<v Speaker 2>perhaps the world's giving us one less day to worry about.

388
00:25:58.559 --> 00:26:01.160
<v Speaker 2>But I was not inclined to work hurry, not yet.

389
00:26:01.839 --> 00:26:04.880
<v Speaker 2>I was impossibly as excited as I was at my

390
00:26:05.000 --> 00:26:08.400
<v Speaker 2>first Audit presented not with error, but with a chance

391
00:26:08.440 --> 00:26:12.079
<v Speaker 2>to bring mystery into the open. We arranged to meet

392
00:26:12.119 --> 00:26:16.039
<v Speaker 2>at the library the following morning. That night, my sleep

393
00:26:16.160 --> 00:26:19.799
<v Speaker 2>was touched by an elusive feeling, half relief, half anticipation.

394
00:26:20.359 --> 00:26:23.039
<v Speaker 2>The village had agreed, at least in spirit, that its

395
00:26:23.119 --> 00:26:26.079
<v Speaker 2>days might not always be what they seem. If time

396
00:26:26.119 --> 00:26:29.559
<v Speaker 2>itself could unravel and every one could pass through, perhaps

397
00:26:29.640 --> 00:26:32.400
<v Speaker 2>it was not simply a floor, but a feature, a

398
00:26:32.519 --> 00:26:36.640
<v Speaker 2>secret kept even from itself, an absence so total it

399
00:26:36.759 --> 00:26:40.920
<v Speaker 2>left the mind thirsty for its edges. Outside, the midnight

400
00:26:41.000 --> 00:26:44.319
<v Speaker 2>air carried sea and stone, enfolding the village in the

401
00:26:44.359 --> 00:26:49.000
<v Speaker 2>old unneeded certainties. But on my bedside table the journal

402
00:26:49.079 --> 00:26:53.400
<v Speaker 2>lay open, pen uncapped, waiting not for missing memories, but

403
00:26:53.440 --> 00:26:57.200
<v Speaker 2>for the next question. Margaret led the way the next morning,

404
00:26:57.559 --> 00:27:01.160
<v Speaker 2>unlocking the library with the precise, slow authority of someone

405
00:27:01.319 --> 00:27:04.119
<v Speaker 2>to whom entropy felt like an affront. I met her

406
00:27:04.119 --> 00:27:06.640
<v Speaker 2>on the front steps with a fresh box of shortbread

407
00:27:06.640 --> 00:27:11.720
<v Speaker 2>from Tom's reparative tribute for whatever dust and mold we'd dislodge.

408
00:27:11.799 --> 00:27:15.039
<v Speaker 2>The sky was low and pewter, a fog bank lurking

409
00:27:15.079 --> 00:27:17.720
<v Speaker 2>half way down the lane, so early that only the

410
00:27:17.799 --> 00:27:21.799
<v Speaker 2>baker and the gulls were certain it was morning. Inside,

411
00:27:21.880 --> 00:27:24.799
<v Speaker 2>the public rooms were quietly echoing, gray light caught on

412
00:27:24.880 --> 00:27:29.640
<v Speaker 2>battered spines. We left the normal bustle, children's reading, our posters,

413
00:27:29.920 --> 00:27:33.279
<v Speaker 2>some alone displays for the Warren, passed the staff desks,

414
00:27:33.559 --> 00:27:36.640
<v Speaker 2>through storerooms dense with bric a brac and obsolete printers.

415
00:27:37.279 --> 00:27:41.440
<v Speaker 2>Margaret's keechin jingled found the one ancient skeleton key and

416
00:27:41.519 --> 00:27:44.599
<v Speaker 2>rested open the door to the rare document's room. The

417
00:27:44.640 --> 00:27:47.599
<v Speaker 2>air was cooler and heavy, with the cellulose hush of

418
00:27:47.640 --> 00:27:52.359
<v Speaker 2>forgotten paper. Careful of the step, she warned, not looking back,

419
00:27:52.799 --> 00:27:56.079
<v Speaker 2>and don't trip over the barometer some former Vicker's pride

420
00:27:56.119 --> 00:27:59.920
<v Speaker 2>and joy. The archive was a pair of battered desks,

421
00:28:00.160 --> 00:28:04.359
<v Speaker 2>a battered kettle defunct, and three bookcases crammed with uncataloged

422
00:28:04.400 --> 00:28:08.680
<v Speaker 2>ledges and private donations. Yellow sticky notes swarmed over folders

423
00:28:08.720 --> 00:28:14.000
<v Speaker 2>marked in faint pencil weather tides, meryll proclamations, misk folklore.

424
00:28:14.559 --> 00:28:18.440
<v Speaker 2>The farthest shelf held the meteorological logs, decades of spiral

425
00:28:18.440 --> 00:28:21.799
<v Speaker 2>bound note books, covers foxed and warped with mildew, but

426
00:28:21.920 --> 00:28:26.119
<v Speaker 2>pages neat. Margaret selected the one labeled nineteen fifty six

427
00:28:26.279 --> 00:28:30.079
<v Speaker 2>nineteen seventy nine. It opened with the solemn neatness of

428
00:28:30.079 --> 00:28:34.920
<v Speaker 2>a professional obsession. Weather noted, daily tides, rain, wind. The

429
00:28:35.000 --> 00:28:38.880
<v Speaker 2>first page announced in immaculate copper plate June bled across

430
00:28:38.920 --> 00:28:43.119
<v Speaker 2>two pages nineteen fifty eight, June twelfth, light showers wind

431
00:28:43.200 --> 00:28:47.680
<v Speaker 2>e n E sixty two degrees f, then abruptly June fourteenth,

432
00:28:47.720 --> 00:28:53.039
<v Speaker 2>with a line no data. The pattern recurred nineteen sixty seven,

433
00:28:53.160 --> 00:28:56.559
<v Speaker 2>nineteen seventy one, nineteen seventy six, always a blank between

434
00:28:56.559 --> 00:28:59.759
<v Speaker 2>the twelfth and fourteenth. Sometimes a scribble in the margin,

435
00:29:00.359 --> 00:29:04.599
<v Speaker 2>no entry, equipment idle or simply a dash, no suggestion

436
00:29:04.720 --> 00:29:07.799
<v Speaker 2>of repair, no reason for the recorder to lie or forget.

437
00:29:08.160 --> 00:29:11.240
<v Speaker 2>Clipped in the back was a single note, unsigned, likely

438
00:29:11.279 --> 00:29:15.680
<v Speaker 2>from the compiler, always a day lost. Recorder cannot recall

439
00:29:15.799 --> 00:29:20.839
<v Speaker 2>why Margaret turned to a box labeled manuscript Hoggan Ledger

440
00:29:20.960 --> 00:29:25.039
<v Speaker 2>late seventeen hundreds, a find only locals might value. Its

441
00:29:25.039 --> 00:29:29.000
<v Speaker 2>binding laced with polished twine, its covers warped. She eased

442
00:29:29.039 --> 00:29:32.480
<v Speaker 2>it open diaries, not day by day, but nearly so.

443
00:29:33.119 --> 00:29:36.759
<v Speaker 2>Life as measured in seed plantings and churchings, small village

444
00:29:36.799 --> 00:29:40.920
<v Speaker 2>scandals rendered in iron. Gall ink I traced the summer

445
00:29:41.039 --> 00:29:45.400
<v Speaker 2>entries by finger. June twelfth, attended market, bought peppercorn and pins.

446
00:29:45.599 --> 00:29:50.000
<v Speaker 2>Saw Gregory's cow troubled. Next line, June fourteenth, rain walked

447
00:29:50.000 --> 00:29:53.200
<v Speaker 2>a porth. The intervening days simply absent or in one

448
00:29:53.279 --> 00:29:57.519
<v Speaker 2>year a cryptic annotation between no notes leapt the word

449
00:29:57.599 --> 00:30:00.000
<v Speaker 2>struck me leapt, as if the day had been vaulted

450
00:30:00.160 --> 00:30:03.319
<v Speaker 2>over the ordinary. No hint of concern in the tone.

451
00:30:03.559 --> 00:30:07.799
<v Speaker 2>A practical omission, not a lost soul. Margaret pointed to

452
00:30:07.839 --> 00:30:11.720
<v Speaker 2>a passage from the seventeen eighties by custom, the thirteenth

453
00:30:11.799 --> 00:30:16.000
<v Speaker 2>not marked being Timing's mischief. The ink brown and faded,

454
00:30:16.279 --> 00:30:20.519
<v Speaker 2>barely legible. She stood knees creaking, and stretched for a

455
00:30:20.599 --> 00:30:25.680
<v Speaker 2>high folder marked Parish Customs and Observations comp. Eighteen seventy two.

456
00:30:25.960 --> 00:30:29.240
<v Speaker 2>The writing was messier, compiled from oral recitation more than

457
00:30:29.279 --> 00:30:33.640
<v Speaker 2>any clean record, notes about village fairs, feast days, suggestions

458
00:30:33.640 --> 00:30:38.039
<v Speaker 2>about old calendar reforms. On a brittle half page leap day.

459
00:30:38.440 --> 00:30:42.279
<v Speaker 2>Most years, nothing is set to happen. None born, none wed,

460
00:30:42.359 --> 00:30:46.920
<v Speaker 2>none buried. We were silent. Margaret cradled the volume as

461
00:30:46.960 --> 00:30:50.359
<v Speaker 2>if it were a sleeping child. It's always been this way,

462
00:30:50.599 --> 00:30:53.720
<v Speaker 2>she murmured. I just never looked for the pattern. Why

463
00:30:53.759 --> 00:30:57.440
<v Speaker 2>would I. We left the records for a moment and trod,

464
00:30:57.680 --> 00:31:00.799
<v Speaker 2>at my request the short path to the Perrish Cemetery,

465
00:31:01.279 --> 00:31:05.319
<v Speaker 2>Dew soaked our shoes, suns slanted above the lichened stones.

466
00:31:05.960 --> 00:31:09.160
<v Speaker 2>Margaret brought the burial record. I traced dates with a

467
00:31:09.200 --> 00:31:14.079
<v Speaker 2>gloved finger, rows of granite, names crumbling or brightly regilt

468
00:31:14.400 --> 00:31:19.319
<v Speaker 2>Davy's trethuy Clark, dates ranged in looping numerals, Families entangled

469
00:31:19.359 --> 00:31:23.559
<v Speaker 2>in times, remembering June twelve June fourteenth, again and again

470
00:31:23.599 --> 00:31:26.640
<v Speaker 2>a skip, Not one headstone, not a single entry among

471
00:31:26.680 --> 00:31:29.759
<v Speaker 2>two centuries named June thirteenth as a date of death

472
00:31:29.839 --> 00:31:32.960
<v Speaker 2>or birth. Not even a died between in all those

473
00:31:33.000 --> 00:31:36.880
<v Speaker 2>careful chiselings, I had expected, perhaps a rarity, but not

474
00:31:36.960 --> 00:31:41.480
<v Speaker 2>a perfect void. Even the war years blitz an epidemic

475
00:31:41.799 --> 00:31:46.160
<v Speaker 2>left that day untouched. I wonder if anyone's noticed before,

476
00:31:46.519 --> 00:31:50.799
<v Speaker 2>I asked, Margaret shook her head biting a nail. We've

477
00:31:50.839 --> 00:31:53.680
<v Speaker 2>all seen it, I suppose, just never thought it odd,

478
00:31:54.079 --> 00:31:58.119
<v Speaker 2>easier to blame chance. We returned to the library the

479
00:31:58.160 --> 00:32:01.240
<v Speaker 2>space insular as a conch shell in the local folk

480
00:32:01.319 --> 00:32:06.079
<v Speaker 2>tale almanac, part's scrap book, part annotated diary. Margaret unearthed

481
00:32:06.079 --> 00:32:10.119
<v Speaker 2>two more clues in a crabbed nineteenth century hand Tea's

482
00:32:10.240 --> 00:32:13.119
<v Speaker 2>bad luck to begin a roof on leap day, nothing

483
00:32:13.160 --> 00:32:16.359
<v Speaker 2>will stand, and from a few years later, best to

484
00:32:16.440 --> 00:32:19.960
<v Speaker 2>rest between the days. I asked if we could speak

485
00:32:20.000 --> 00:32:23.720
<v Speaker 2>to the oldest villager, Missus Tregaran, now ninety eight, whom

486
00:32:23.799 --> 00:32:28.359
<v Speaker 2>Margaret visited with groceries each Tuesday. Margaret arranged a visit.

487
00:32:29.359 --> 00:32:34.079
<v Speaker 2>Missus Tregaran's cottage was another time pocket, thick walls, low beams,

488
00:32:34.160 --> 00:32:37.920
<v Speaker 2>and oil stove that ticked gently. Her hearing aid whistled.

489
00:32:37.960 --> 00:32:42.119
<v Speaker 2>As we entered, she fixed us with a watery, indestructible gaze,

490
00:32:42.519 --> 00:32:46.359
<v Speaker 2>her hands knotted tea towels in her lap. Margaret explained

491
00:32:46.359 --> 00:32:50.039
<v Speaker 2>our errand lost a day? Have you? She asked, a

492
00:32:50.119 --> 00:32:54.720
<v Speaker 2>smile twitching across lips, shiny with sugar. Don't worry, TWA's

493
00:32:54.759 --> 00:32:57.200
<v Speaker 2>the same in my mother's day. We never marked the

494
00:32:57.279 --> 00:33:01.039
<v Speaker 2>thirteenth too much bother That's all meant. Nothing happened, so

495
00:33:01.079 --> 00:33:04.160
<v Speaker 2>we put it out of mind. Did she say why?

496
00:33:04.440 --> 00:33:08.799
<v Speaker 2>I prompted, Oh, old stories, nothing ever set in stone.

497
00:33:09.200 --> 00:33:11.559
<v Speaker 2>Some said it was bad luck. Some said the sea

498
00:33:11.680 --> 00:33:15.319
<v Speaker 2>demanded it. One day to leap, one to lose. She shrugged,

499
00:33:15.880 --> 00:33:19.920
<v Speaker 2>like Carnival or bomb fair night, not written, just understood.

500
00:33:20.960 --> 00:33:23.839
<v Speaker 2>Did you ever try to remember anything for the thirteenth,

501
00:33:24.279 --> 00:33:28.519
<v Speaker 2>Margaret asked gently, naw, you'd be the only one. We

502
00:33:28.599 --> 00:33:31.279
<v Speaker 2>always say it's for the best. A day saved is

503
00:33:31.319 --> 00:33:35.559
<v Speaker 2>a day never lost. We left her laughter, following us

504
00:33:35.559 --> 00:33:38.720
<v Speaker 2>to the street. On the walk back, I felt the

505
00:33:38.720 --> 00:33:44.359
<v Speaker 2>first pang of humility. Every system I prized, routines, records, clocks,

506
00:33:44.680 --> 00:33:47.839
<v Speaker 2>all proved paper screen thin when brushed with this calm

507
00:33:48.000 --> 00:33:52.480
<v Speaker 2>collective neglect. Yet the regularity was too complete for happenstance.

508
00:33:53.599 --> 00:33:57.799
<v Speaker 2>Margaret mused aloud as we walked. Maybe it's an old adjustment,

509
00:33:58.119 --> 00:34:01.200
<v Speaker 2>something to do with the calendar change. Weren't there years

510
00:34:01.240 --> 00:34:05.920
<v Speaker 2>when days went missing? I nodded the Great calendar Reform

511
00:34:06.279 --> 00:34:12.400
<v Speaker 2>Julian to Gregorian, seventeen fifty two, Parliament dropped eleven days nationwide.

512
00:34:12.440 --> 00:34:16.320
<v Speaker 2>Some people rioted, blustering for the return of their days.

513
00:34:16.920 --> 00:34:20.760
<v Speaker 2>But why just here, she wondered. Let's ask some one

514
00:34:20.800 --> 00:34:25.079
<v Speaker 2>with an eye for customs, I replied. Doctor Whitby welcomed

515
00:34:25.159 --> 00:34:28.599
<v Speaker 2>us later that afternoon, serving tea in China so thin

516
00:34:28.719 --> 00:34:31.400
<v Speaker 2>I could see my shadow in it. His study held

517
00:34:31.440 --> 00:34:35.360
<v Speaker 2>more curiosities, and abacus missing a bead, a drawer of

518
00:34:35.400 --> 00:34:40.599
<v Speaker 2>odd coins, newspapers yellowed thin as old apple's skin. When

519
00:34:40.599 --> 00:34:44.119
<v Speaker 2>we recounted our findings, he listened with brisk, good humor,

520
00:34:44.559 --> 00:34:47.400
<v Speaker 2>then reached into his desk and brought forth a folder

521
00:34:47.440 --> 00:34:51.679
<v Speaker 2>of typed notes and clippings. His amateur historian's pride, he

522
00:34:51.760 --> 00:34:55.559
<v Speaker 2>riffled through them, extracting a piece of yellowed foolscap clipped

523
00:34:55.599 --> 00:34:59.679
<v Speaker 2>to parish minutes from seventeen sixty two. In respect of

524
00:34:59.719 --> 00:35:03.000
<v Speaker 2>old confusions in the reckoning, it is customed that hereafter,

525
00:35:03.280 --> 00:35:06.400
<v Speaker 2>between the twelfth and fourteenth days of June, the community

526
00:35:06.400 --> 00:35:09.239
<v Speaker 2>shall rest, and no business or counting be done on

527
00:35:09.320 --> 00:35:13.679
<v Speaker 2>that day in perpetuity. The handwriting was narrow, sober, A

528
00:35:13.800 --> 00:35:17.840
<v Speaker 2>vicar's signature trailed off dry ink, dragging below in a

529
00:35:17.960 --> 00:35:22.960
<v Speaker 2>used bookseller's ink. Curiously, this was not universal. Most villages

530
00:35:23.039 --> 00:35:28.239
<v Speaker 2>kept the standard. Count Whitby scratched his chin, smiling. Seems

531
00:35:28.280 --> 00:35:31.079
<v Speaker 2>we invented a local leap day, but fixed it on June,

532
00:35:31.079 --> 00:35:35.159
<v Speaker 2>not September. He shrugged. Who can say why? Maybe to

533
00:35:35.239 --> 00:35:40.039
<v Speaker 2>keep taxes or saints days aligned may be superstition. Britain's

534
00:35:40.079 --> 00:35:44.519
<v Speaker 2>calendars were chaos. Why would people keep it year after year?

535
00:35:44.800 --> 00:35:49.480
<v Speaker 2>I asked. It must have outlived any reason. Tradition does that.

536
00:35:49.920 --> 00:35:53.400
<v Speaker 2>He observed. After a while, any habit becomes a rule,

537
00:35:53.920 --> 00:35:58.719
<v Speaker 2>especially the ones nobody else follows. Wouldn't that just explain

538
00:35:58.800 --> 00:36:03.280
<v Speaker 2>the documents the habit? Margaret interjected, what about the plants

539
00:36:03.280 --> 00:36:08.159
<v Speaker 2>and the clocks, all those automatic systems. Doctor Whitby opened

540
00:36:08.199 --> 00:36:10.920
<v Speaker 2>his arms. There you have me. I could tell you

541
00:36:11.000 --> 00:36:14.079
<v Speaker 2>stories about village time slips till supper. But I am

542
00:36:14.119 --> 00:36:18.360
<v Speaker 2>a doctor, not a physicist. Still, maybe some boundaries are

543
00:36:18.400 --> 00:36:22.280
<v Speaker 2>stickier than we know. A thrill ran up my spine.

544
00:36:22.639 --> 00:36:25.079
<v Speaker 2>We had an answer for the human realm, a quirk

545
00:36:25.119 --> 00:36:28.280
<v Speaker 2>of reckoning, lost in the tides of reform and preserved

546
00:36:28.320 --> 00:36:32.760
<v Speaker 2>past all need. But our physical phenomena, the sunflowers jump

547
00:36:32.960 --> 00:36:37.840
<v Speaker 2>the digital gaps resisted such easy shelving over tea. We

548
00:36:37.880 --> 00:36:42.400
<v Speaker 2>mapped a hypothesis. The original villagers, perhaps to simplify harvests,

549
00:36:42.480 --> 00:36:46.159
<v Speaker 2>taxes or feasts, chose to skip a day outright every year,

550
00:36:46.480 --> 00:36:49.760
<v Speaker 2>not just once, as Parliament had dictated, and the calender

551
00:36:49.840 --> 00:36:53.400
<v Speaker 2>stuck a habit of a mission ossified into daily reality,

552
00:36:53.760 --> 00:36:56.719
<v Speaker 2>so much so that the community never noticed, and nobody

553
00:36:56.800 --> 00:37:01.039
<v Speaker 2>queried empty ledgers or unwatered plots. With time, no one

554
00:37:01.119 --> 00:37:05.320
<v Speaker 2>bothered to question, and the day's absence became absolute. But

555
00:37:05.400 --> 00:37:09.679
<v Speaker 2>how did this explain the more impossible memories? Compliance, plants,

556
00:37:09.800 --> 00:37:14.599
<v Speaker 2>eager growth, clocks, reluctance to tick that evening, I wondered

557
00:37:14.639 --> 00:37:17.199
<v Speaker 2>aloud in the WhatsApp group. What if we set up

558
00:37:17.199 --> 00:37:22.280
<v Speaker 2>a device cameras automated diaries explicitly to record through the

559
00:37:22.360 --> 00:37:27.039
<v Speaker 2>lost day. Would whatever mechanism prevents memory or habit from

560
00:37:27.039 --> 00:37:32.800
<v Speaker 2>marking June thirteenth also defy machines? Margaret responded within minutes,

561
00:37:33.320 --> 00:37:36.760
<v Speaker 2>I'll loan the library's time lapse camera. Let's document it

562
00:37:36.800 --> 00:37:41.360
<v Speaker 2>next year. Plants clocks anything we can. Maybe science will

563
00:37:41.400 --> 00:37:45.880
<v Speaker 2>catch what habit has missed. Doctor Whitby chimed in, if

564
00:37:45.920 --> 00:37:49.360
<v Speaker 2>nothing else, you'll prove the universe can outstubborn a cornishman.

565
00:37:50.400 --> 00:37:54.039
<v Speaker 2>The village's humor, its gentle ability to turn curiosity into

566
00:37:54.159 --> 00:37:58.599
<v Speaker 2>lightness steadied me. But privately, I emailed a plant biologist

567
00:37:58.599 --> 00:38:02.960
<v Speaker 2>at the university matching my sunflower growth records, and asked,

568
00:38:03.159 --> 00:38:05.639
<v Speaker 2>is there any plausible way for a plant to simulate

569
00:38:05.719 --> 00:38:09.119
<v Speaker 2>two days growth in one? Purely from confusion in the

570
00:38:09.159 --> 00:38:14.800
<v Speaker 2>gardener's head. The response several days later was straightforward, I

571
00:38:14.880 --> 00:38:18.559
<v Speaker 2>can't explain the gap. Growth looks normal except for that

572
00:38:18.679 --> 00:38:22.800
<v Speaker 2>one apparent leap. Whether light, water are all within expected

573
00:38:22.840 --> 00:38:27.000
<v Speaker 2>parameters unless you have an extremely aggressive fertilizer or a

574
00:38:27.039 --> 00:38:32.480
<v Speaker 2>time machine, I have no biologically satisfying answer. The researcher

575
00:38:32.519 --> 00:38:35.719
<v Speaker 2>offered to test the question in situ next June, sending

576
00:38:35.719 --> 00:38:39.599
<v Speaker 2>two sets of seedlings, one inside the village one out.

577
00:38:40.599 --> 00:38:43.920
<v Speaker 2>Spurred by this, I talked to Alec about his GPS logs.

578
00:38:44.320 --> 00:38:46.760
<v Speaker 2>He noticed that only in the bounds of Saint Brouard's

579
00:38:46.760 --> 00:38:50.960
<v Speaker 2>Firth did his day tracking apps skip forward. Outside time

580
00:38:51.079 --> 00:38:55.079
<v Speaker 2>was measured in honest hours, every day counted. A mirrored

581
00:38:55.119 --> 00:38:58.840
<v Speaker 2>answer came via delivery drivers their parcel logs, while in

582
00:38:58.880 --> 00:39:02.360
<v Speaker 2>the village skipped the thirteenth. On near by roads, no

583
00:39:02.519 --> 00:39:06.719
<v Speaker 2>such anomaly. The effect's boundary was not the coast, but

584
00:39:06.800 --> 00:39:10.239
<v Speaker 2>the limits of sense. Once you entered Saint Broad's Firth,

585
00:39:10.519 --> 00:39:15.440
<v Speaker 2>you played by its rules, whether you believed them or not. Margaret,

586
00:39:15.559 --> 00:39:20.119
<v Speaker 2>digging further into folklore, found mention oblique in codified prose

587
00:39:20.400 --> 00:39:24.079
<v Speaker 2>of a lost village festival, the fast between days. The

588
00:39:24.159 --> 00:39:28.840
<v Speaker 2>description was sparse, A silence kept on that day, no games,

589
00:39:28.920 --> 00:39:32.280
<v Speaker 2>no prayers, no working of land. I pressed her for context.

590
00:39:33.360 --> 00:39:36.599
<v Speaker 2>It might have started as a holy day, she speculated,

591
00:39:37.039 --> 00:39:40.199
<v Speaker 2>or a practical one, and enforced rest the old order

592
00:39:40.239 --> 00:39:43.639
<v Speaker 2>made into faith. I sent a second e mail to

593
00:39:43.679 --> 00:39:46.320
<v Speaker 2>the biologist. What would you say if I told you

594
00:39:46.360 --> 00:39:51.199
<v Speaker 2>only devices, diaries, or plants inside the village boundary fail

595
00:39:51.519 --> 00:39:54.480
<v Speaker 2>to note one day each June, and the skip has

596
00:39:54.559 --> 00:39:59.199
<v Speaker 2>lasted for centuries. He replied, I'd say it sounded like

597
00:39:59.239 --> 00:40:03.760
<v Speaker 2>a social excit experiment gone wild, or a localized magnetic anomaly,

598
00:40:04.239 --> 00:40:07.239
<v Speaker 2>but neither would cause plants to conform to such a pattern.

599
00:40:07.679 --> 00:40:10.280
<v Speaker 2>Let me know if you test again next year, I'll

600
00:40:10.320 --> 00:40:13.800
<v Speaker 2>send a team. The deeper we looked, the more the

601
00:40:13.840 --> 00:40:19.000
<v Speaker 2>phenomenon blurred lines. Traditions shaped record, but record shaped tradition,

602
00:40:19.440 --> 00:40:23.760
<v Speaker 2>and both had somehow inscribed themselves into physical circumstance. It

603
00:40:23.880 --> 00:40:27.960
<v Speaker 2>was a feedback loop, impossible to find the start. A

604
00:40:28.039 --> 00:40:31.760
<v Speaker 2>skepticism was beginning to gnaw, a suspicion that none of

605
00:40:31.800 --> 00:40:37.119
<v Speaker 2>our explanations quite sufficed. At Margaret's suggestion, we gathered with

606
00:40:37.239 --> 00:40:40.159
<v Speaker 2>doctor Whitby to review church and council records in the

607
00:40:40.199 --> 00:40:43.960
<v Speaker 2>hope that more definite origins might show. We poured over

608
00:40:44.039 --> 00:40:47.960
<v Speaker 2>old charts and ledgers, squinting at centuries old ink, mapping

609
00:40:48.039 --> 00:40:52.079
<v Speaker 2>the moment of divergence. Invariably, the pattern pointed to the

610
00:40:52.119 --> 00:40:57.280
<v Speaker 2>eighteenth century Reforms, when Britain abruptly lost days on authorities command.

611
00:40:58.360 --> 00:41:01.119
<v Speaker 2>A brittle transcription in a package from the Vicar's files

612
00:41:01.159 --> 00:41:04.159
<v Speaker 2>caught my eye. Let it be remembered that for the

613
00:41:04.159 --> 00:41:07.039
<v Speaker 2>peace of reckoning, and to avoid confusion, we will not

614
00:41:07.159 --> 00:41:10.039
<v Speaker 2>mark the thirteenth of June, but let all ages hold

615
00:41:10.079 --> 00:41:13.639
<v Speaker 2>to the skipping. This custom, I read, was for the

616
00:41:13.679 --> 00:41:18.639
<v Speaker 2>settlement of ledgers, tides, feasts, and holy obligations, lest calendar

617
00:41:18.760 --> 00:41:22.159
<v Speaker 2>error breed mischief for the village. The leap had been

618
00:41:22.239 --> 00:41:25.760
<v Speaker 2>chosen and then fossilized, the act so successful that it

619
00:41:25.840 --> 00:41:30.280
<v Speaker 2>overruled even births and burials, business and rain gages. For

620
00:41:30.400 --> 00:41:33.800
<v Speaker 2>notes on village fares, I found this. The festival is

621
00:41:33.880 --> 00:41:36.320
<v Speaker 2>the day after the leap. The leap is not to

622
00:41:36.360 --> 00:41:41.000
<v Speaker 2>be counted for fear of the old harm. Margaret translated

623
00:41:41.079 --> 00:41:45.440
<v Speaker 2>in plain terms. When they dropped the calendar days, everyone scrambled,

624
00:41:45.719 --> 00:41:49.800
<v Speaker 2>Feasts fell wrong, taxes fell due too soon. Maybe the

625
00:41:49.880 --> 00:41:53.760
<v Speaker 2>villagers here, being stubborn or simply practical, chose a little

626
00:41:53.800 --> 00:41:57.719
<v Speaker 2>skip to keep everything aligned, and it stuck. There was

627
00:41:57.719 --> 00:42:01.599
<v Speaker 2>something plausible about it, a story of ordinary people outwitting

628
00:42:01.639 --> 00:42:04.280
<v Speaker 2>an edict with a bit of calender knitting. But as

629
00:42:04.320 --> 00:42:07.920
<v Speaker 2>satisfying as the paperwork was, it left the oddest elements

630
00:42:08.280 --> 00:42:12.760
<v Speaker 2>the clockwork soaked, plant warmed side of the mystery undone

631
00:42:12.760 --> 00:42:16.480
<v Speaker 2>calender's paper over inconvenience, but they don't make the grass

632
00:42:16.559 --> 00:42:20.599
<v Speaker 2>grow faster or the sky forget a gale. I set

633
00:42:20.639 --> 00:42:23.400
<v Speaker 2>to thinking about the act of forgetting, not a flaw,

634
00:42:23.599 --> 00:42:27.039
<v Speaker 2>but a protective action. If the tradition was so ingrained

635
00:42:27.039 --> 00:42:31.000
<v Speaker 2>that even nature, in the swirl of local expectation forgot,

636
00:42:31.639 --> 00:42:34.639
<v Speaker 2>what did that say for the malleability of time of

637
00:42:34.719 --> 00:42:39.400
<v Speaker 2>reality when structured by shared belief Out of ideas, I

638
00:42:39.440 --> 00:42:42.760
<v Speaker 2>proposed a test. Let's see if we can outwit this gap.

639
00:42:43.039 --> 00:42:47.880
<v Speaker 2>I told Margaret, doctor Whitby Alec the entire impromptu investigation committee.

640
00:42:47.920 --> 00:42:51.519
<v Speaker 2>At our next pub gathering. We'll set every automatic device

641
00:42:51.559 --> 00:42:56.280
<v Speaker 2>we can clocks, timers, cameras, voice recorders, starting the night

642
00:42:56.320 --> 00:42:59.840
<v Speaker 2>of June twelfth and running through to the fourteenth. Perhaps

643
00:43:00.000 --> 00:43:03.719
<v Speaker 2>something will force the day to reveal itself. Every One

644
00:43:03.800 --> 00:43:07.800
<v Speaker 2>brightened at the challenge. Tom offered a shop alarm, Margaret

645
00:43:07.840 --> 00:43:12.119
<v Speaker 2>produced the library's aging nikon for time lapse. Sheila contributed

646
00:43:12.119 --> 00:43:16.840
<v Speaker 2>her ancient digital kitchen timer. Too finicky to fool with.

647
00:43:16.960 --> 00:43:20.559
<v Speaker 2>Excitement gathering for the experiment, I quietly reached out to

648
00:43:20.599 --> 00:43:24.000
<v Speaker 2>Margaret's nephew, Reese from London, who was planning to visit

649
00:43:24.039 --> 00:43:26.800
<v Speaker 2>that June. I told him only that we wished him

650
00:43:26.840 --> 00:43:30.039
<v Speaker 2>to keep a meticulous daily diary, and to avoid at

651
00:43:30.039 --> 00:43:34.159
<v Speaker 2>first any of the rumors or explanations swirling in the village.

652
00:43:34.599 --> 00:43:38.519
<v Speaker 2>He agreed, perhaps humorously, to be a control group of one.

653
00:43:39.400 --> 00:43:42.800
<v Speaker 2>The big day came at sunset on June twelfth. We

654
00:43:42.880 --> 00:43:47.079
<v Speaker 2>set up the gear. Clocks ticked, timers beeped, cameras faced

655
00:43:47.119 --> 00:43:51.239
<v Speaker 2>the garden, voice memos initiated. I wrote an entry noting

656
00:43:51.280 --> 00:43:53.840
<v Speaker 2>the test recording the time of night and the length

657
00:43:53.880 --> 00:43:58.199
<v Speaker 2>of sunset shadow. On June fourteenth. The first thing I

658
00:43:58.280 --> 00:44:01.280
<v Speaker 2>did was fetch the devices, heart skipping a little with

659
00:44:01.360 --> 00:44:05.039
<v Speaker 2>that old thrill of unknown results. The timers had ticked

660
00:44:05.039 --> 00:44:07.679
<v Speaker 2>straight from midnight on the twelfth to a minute past

661
00:44:07.800 --> 00:44:11.840
<v Speaker 2>midnight on the fourteenth, No error messages, no lost data,

662
00:44:12.320 --> 00:44:16.800
<v Speaker 2>just an uninterrupted march, skipping precisely where every other record did.

663
00:44:17.840 --> 00:44:20.760
<v Speaker 2>The time lapse camera set to take a fote every

664
00:44:20.800 --> 00:44:24.599
<v Speaker 2>hour showed June twelfth dusk, then an abrupt jump to

665
00:44:24.679 --> 00:44:29.360
<v Speaker 2>June fourteenth, with a sunflower suddenly two inches taller, morning

666
00:44:29.440 --> 00:44:32.840
<v Speaker 2>light leaking in around petals unable to name their interval.

667
00:44:33.880 --> 00:44:37.320
<v Speaker 2>My voice recorder was more unsettling. It played my June

668
00:44:37.320 --> 00:44:42.000
<v Speaker 2>twelfth bedtime message alarm set ready for tomorrow's experiment, and

669
00:44:42.039 --> 00:44:44.559
<v Speaker 2>the next file jumped to the morning of the fourteenth.

670
00:44:44.920 --> 00:44:48.639
<v Speaker 2>I distinctly remembered the intention, and yet upon playing back,

671
00:44:48.880 --> 00:44:51.639
<v Speaker 2>there was no trace of error, sense of omission, or

672
00:44:51.719 --> 00:44:55.440
<v Speaker 2>the least disturbance in continuity, only the certainty that a

673
00:44:55.519 --> 00:44:58.599
<v Speaker 2>day had been effaced, and my mind, willingly or not,

674
00:44:59.039 --> 00:45:02.480
<v Speaker 2>had played its part. When Rhese mailed me his diary

675
00:45:02.519 --> 00:45:05.280
<v Speaker 2>a week later, he included a word perfect account of

676
00:45:05.360 --> 00:45:08.960
<v Speaker 2>June twelfth, his drive from the city, arrival supper at

677
00:45:08.960 --> 00:45:12.280
<v Speaker 2>the first's end. The next entry in his untidy scrawl

678
00:45:12.599 --> 00:45:15.960
<v Speaker 2>was headed June fourteenth, and he observed only that yesterday

679
00:45:15.960 --> 00:45:19.960
<v Speaker 2>had blended away a blank odd in feeling, but nothing alarming.

680
00:45:20.400 --> 00:45:22.920
<v Speaker 2>I suppose I was simply absorbed, or the sea air

681
00:45:22.960 --> 00:45:26.280
<v Speaker 2>did me in. I called him, pressing for some flicker

682
00:45:26.280 --> 00:45:30.599
<v Speaker 2>of the missing day. He insisted, mildly amused that he

683
00:45:30.599 --> 00:45:32.719
<v Speaker 2>could not, for the life of him, tell me why

684
00:45:32.760 --> 00:45:36.320
<v Speaker 2>his notebook had skipped Wednesday, nor recall a single event,

685
00:45:36.719 --> 00:45:41.880
<v Speaker 2>meal or conversation. His digital photos, shot at intervals likewise

686
00:45:41.960 --> 00:45:45.639
<v Speaker 2>jumped from Tuesday to Thursday, missing any record even of

687
00:45:45.719 --> 00:45:49.679
<v Speaker 2>idle beach walking or pasty shop cues. None of us

688
00:45:49.719 --> 00:45:55.000
<v Speaker 2>were frightened, perplexed, delighted, stubbornly curious. Tom mulling over his

689
00:45:55.039 --> 00:45:58.880
<v Speaker 2>shop's alarm log wondered, what if, for all our clever gadgets,

690
00:45:58.960 --> 00:46:02.920
<v Speaker 2>we simply impose a blank through force of custom? Alec counted,

691
00:46:03.239 --> 00:46:05.679
<v Speaker 2>But how would that make the plants grow faster then?

692
00:46:06.079 --> 00:46:10.400
<v Speaker 2>Or get the machines to skip too? Doctor Whitby, standing

693
00:46:10.440 --> 00:46:12.559
<v Speaker 2>by the bar, surveyed the lot of us with an

694
00:46:12.599 --> 00:46:16.239
<v Speaker 2>expression belied by decades of treating stubbed toes and the

695
00:46:16.280 --> 00:46:21.000
<v Speaker 2>odd case of chicken pox Lionel. He mused, perhaps we

696
00:46:21.039 --> 00:46:24.599
<v Speaker 2>have fallen into the deepest English tradition, making ourselves so

697
00:46:24.800 --> 00:46:29.000
<v Speaker 2>dull in habit the universe itself obliges just to please us.

698
00:46:29.719 --> 00:46:33.280
<v Speaker 2>I held my tongue, feeling both humility and a lurching

699
00:46:33.360 --> 00:46:37.639
<v Speaker 2>sense of the world's flexibility. How an entire community seeking

700
00:46:37.679 --> 00:46:40.639
<v Speaker 2>harmony had managed to snip a day out of time's

701
00:46:40.679 --> 00:46:45.440
<v Speaker 2>own ledger training whether and machines to comply? I thought? Further,

702
00:46:45.920 --> 00:46:48.800
<v Speaker 2>Was it truly just belief as children making up a

703
00:46:48.800 --> 00:46:51.480
<v Speaker 2>game so long and so well that even the garden

704
00:46:51.559 --> 00:46:54.559
<v Speaker 2>joined in? Or was there something under the soil in

705
00:46:54.639 --> 00:46:58.000
<v Speaker 2>the stone or the sea's breath, a property native to

706
00:46:58.039 --> 00:47:01.440
<v Speaker 2>this place. Some resonance subtle as a church bell at

707
00:47:01.480 --> 00:47:05.239
<v Speaker 2>tide's highest point, bending time so gently that only an

708
00:47:05.280 --> 00:47:08.960
<v Speaker 2>outsider or a record keeper in his dotage might notice.

709
00:47:09.719 --> 00:47:12.960
<v Speaker 2>To settle the question of the phenomenon's boundary, Margaret and

710
00:47:13.039 --> 00:47:16.800
<v Speaker 2>I arranged a new plant test with the university. Two

711
00:47:16.880 --> 00:47:21.119
<v Speaker 2>trays of seedlings sent, one planted in the village's community greenhouse,

712
00:47:21.400 --> 00:47:27.000
<v Speaker 2>one outside in Truro City plot. Both sets were tended, scrupulously, watered,

713
00:47:27.039 --> 00:47:31.519
<v Speaker 2>and fertilized by the same schedule. Results come July bore

714
00:47:31.559 --> 00:47:34.719
<v Speaker 2>out the pattern. Inside the village, the seedlings leapt in

715
00:47:34.760 --> 00:47:39.119
<v Speaker 2>growth across the skipped day. Outside, identical plants grew at

716
00:47:39.159 --> 00:47:42.480
<v Speaker 2>the normal pace. A summary email from the lab we

717
00:47:42.559 --> 00:47:48.079
<v Speaker 2>observe a consistent growth differential only within the coordinates you gave. Soil, light,

718
00:47:48.320 --> 00:47:54.519
<v Speaker 2>and watering appear identical. No biological cause determined. The scientist's

719
00:47:54.559 --> 00:47:57.639
<v Speaker 2>final note read, if this is a joke, it's a

720
00:47:57.679 --> 00:48:02.599
<v Speaker 2>sophisticated one. Can you explain your methodology? I could not

721
00:48:03.800 --> 00:48:07.039
<v Speaker 2>records with the met office. When I finally made contact

722
00:48:07.079 --> 00:48:11.320
<v Speaker 2>with a sympathetic administrator, affirmed the gap for decades, the

723
00:48:11.400 --> 00:48:14.960
<v Speaker 2>village's station had always missed its thirteenth of June data dump,

724
00:48:15.280 --> 00:48:19.079
<v Speaker 2>contrary to national schedules and censors running three hundred sixty

725
00:48:19.079 --> 00:48:24.039
<v Speaker 2>five days. Other towns weren't affected. Once a regional tech

726
00:48:24.079 --> 00:48:26.480
<v Speaker 2>had been called for what he'd assumed was a bug

727
00:48:26.519 --> 00:48:29.880
<v Speaker 2>in the logger, he'd replaced the hardware with no change.

728
00:48:30.679 --> 00:48:33.199
<v Speaker 2>As I reviewed this evidence, it dawned on me that

729
00:48:33.239 --> 00:48:36.440
<v Speaker 2>not only was the thirteenth ignored by the villagers, their

730
00:48:36.480 --> 00:48:40.639
<v Speaker 2>habit of omission quietly elegantly enforced a bubble where recognition,

731
00:48:40.920 --> 00:48:44.840
<v Speaker 2>record and even the encouragement of biological times simply did

732
00:48:44.840 --> 00:48:48.840
<v Speaker 2>not hold. I recorded a voice memo to myself, the

733
00:48:48.920 --> 00:48:52.800
<v Speaker 2>experiment is not with technology, but with consensus. What the

734
00:48:52.880 --> 00:48:56.239
<v Speaker 2>village expects holds even in the workings of the world.

735
00:48:57.360 --> 00:49:01.239
<v Speaker 2>Margaret ran the experiment with potted plants. She set two trays,

736
00:49:01.440 --> 00:49:04.760
<v Speaker 2>one just beyond the village's Cairn boundary, one inside her

737
00:49:04.800 --> 00:49:08.360
<v Speaker 2>garden wall. When she checked them after the thirteenth, though

738
00:49:08.360 --> 00:49:11.159
<v Speaker 2>only a single night had passed, her tray had grown

739
00:49:11.239 --> 00:49:16.239
<v Speaker 2>two days worth. The other outside sent Broad's bounds matched

740
00:49:16.280 --> 00:49:21.360
<v Speaker 2>its slower ordinary pace. Doctor Whitby digging among his historical

741
00:49:21.440 --> 00:49:25.159
<v Speaker 2>letters found one from the nineteenth century, a villager writing

742
00:49:25.199 --> 00:49:29.639
<v Speaker 2>to a relative in Devon, apologizing for missing correspondents. Time

743
00:49:29.679 --> 00:49:32.280
<v Speaker 2>got away from me, as it does here between the days.

744
00:49:32.679 --> 00:49:36.320
<v Speaker 2>Next I wrote, it was already sent. Swiin s on

745
00:49:36.400 --> 00:49:40.079
<v Speaker 2>the Devon's side. The recipient annotates odd jump. But what

746
00:49:40.159 --> 00:49:44.079
<v Speaker 2>can be done. At the final pub gathering, the regulars

747
00:49:44.079 --> 00:49:47.320
<v Speaker 2>debated what it all meant. Maybe the world needs reminding

748
00:49:47.320 --> 00:49:51.000
<v Speaker 2>that days aren't always equal, said missus Francis, whose peas

749
00:49:51.000 --> 00:49:54.440
<v Speaker 2>by now threatened to climb her fence. Alec toasted to

750
00:49:54.480 --> 00:49:57.280
<v Speaker 2>the lost day. May it never return to cause paperwork.

751
00:49:57.840 --> 00:50:01.239
<v Speaker 2>Tom in his way wondered if it was corner. The

752
00:50:01.280 --> 00:50:05.039
<v Speaker 2>student from last week said, only it's a vibe. Maybe

753
00:50:05.039 --> 00:50:08.880
<v Speaker 2>place matters more than we think. No one was alarmed.

754
00:50:09.400 --> 00:50:11.960
<v Speaker 2>In fact, the consensus grew to be part of a

755
00:50:12.039 --> 00:50:15.400
<v Speaker 2>village that laid claim to a missing day once a year.

756
00:50:15.480 --> 00:50:18.400
<v Speaker 2>Was a charm. It made the place feel rare and

757
00:50:18.440 --> 00:50:22.079
<v Speaker 2>connected and strange enough to smile about a riddle that

758
00:50:22.199 --> 00:50:25.239
<v Speaker 2>asked nothing and offered only a gentle fracture in the

759
00:50:25.280 --> 00:50:29.199
<v Speaker 2>shell of ordinary life. For me, though, it turned into

760
00:50:29.239 --> 00:50:33.280
<v Speaker 2>something more. The evidence and tests had slowly revealed that

761
00:50:33.320 --> 00:50:37.079
<v Speaker 2>what began as a pragmatic fix, the smoothing of a calendar,

762
00:50:37.360 --> 00:50:40.639
<v Speaker 2>the avoidance of awkward festivals, the wish to make sense

763
00:50:40.679 --> 00:50:45.519
<v Speaker 2>out of Parliament's confusion, had through repetition, become an inheritance.

764
00:50:46.519 --> 00:50:50.079
<v Speaker 2>The annual leap, so fastidiously kept by list and Ledger,

765
00:50:50.400 --> 00:50:53.320
<v Speaker 2>had wormed its way into the habits of people, and then,

766
00:50:53.559 --> 00:50:58.000
<v Speaker 2>impossibly into the rhythms of the village clockwork, root and leaf.

767
00:50:58.280 --> 00:51:02.400
<v Speaker 2>The very records intended to keep the world certain. It

768
00:51:02.519 --> 00:51:05.199
<v Speaker 2>was as if time in this bounded place had become

769
00:51:05.199 --> 00:51:08.480
<v Speaker 2>a custom rather than law. The village did not simply

770
00:51:08.519 --> 00:51:12.039
<v Speaker 2>forget its day, but excized it smoothly enough that even

771
00:51:12.119 --> 00:51:17.840
<v Speaker 2>systems designed to be impartial, whether sensors, GPS, logs, plant growth, emails,

772
00:51:18.280 --> 00:51:21.960
<v Speaker 2>bode to the collective act. Where habit is steadfast enough,

773
00:51:22.239 --> 00:51:28.119
<v Speaker 2>expectation becomes somehow its own controlling principle. Margaret submitted a

774
00:51:28.199 --> 00:51:31.559
<v Speaker 2>gentle tongue in cheek article to the Firth Times on

775
00:51:31.639 --> 00:51:35.199
<v Speaker 2>the tradition of the leap day Saint Broad's peculiar calendar.

776
00:51:35.559 --> 00:51:39.239
<v Speaker 2>She wrote, it seems our ancestors, in their infinite wisdom

777
00:51:39.400 --> 00:51:42.800
<v Speaker 2>or stubbornness, decreed that the thirteenth of June should trouble

778
00:51:42.880 --> 00:51:47.119
<v Speaker 2>us no further, and so we have unwittingly obliged training

779
00:51:47.199 --> 00:51:51.039
<v Speaker 2>every register, plant, and perhaps even the rain to do. Likewise,

780
00:51:52.119 --> 00:51:55.079
<v Speaker 2>she ended, we forgot the reason, but not the ritual,

781
00:51:55.480 --> 00:52:00.000
<v Speaker 2>and sometimes that is enough. The village, I realized, Exus

782
00:52:00.000 --> 00:52:02.440
<v Speaker 2>most slightly out of step with the rest of Britain.

783
00:52:03.079 --> 00:52:06.039
<v Speaker 2>For one interval every year, a day is not past,

784
00:52:06.159 --> 00:52:10.159
<v Speaker 2>but parted with so carefully, so completely, that the absence

785
00:52:10.239 --> 00:52:13.760
<v Speaker 2>becomes ordinary. The trick is not to fear the mystery,

786
00:52:14.000 --> 00:52:16.880
<v Speaker 2>nor to burden it with meaning, but simply to notice

787
00:52:16.920 --> 00:52:20.519
<v Speaker 2>the beauty in what is not there. That was my revelation.

788
00:52:21.039 --> 00:52:24.960
<v Speaker 2>The answer contained, for all its practical roots, more than explanation.

789
00:52:25.679 --> 00:52:28.719
<v Speaker 2>The world, it seems, is less hard edged than we imagine.

790
00:52:29.079 --> 00:52:33.199
<v Speaker 2>Attention and habit and expectation color inside the lines, and sometimes,

791
00:52:33.519 --> 00:52:37.719
<v Speaker 2>as inceint Broad's Firth, even define the lines themselves. The

792
00:52:37.800 --> 00:52:40.559
<v Speaker 2>impossible is not the day we miss, but the ease

793
00:52:40.639 --> 00:52:43.320
<v Speaker 2>with which we let it go, and how gracefully the

794
00:52:43.400 --> 00:52:47.000
<v Speaker 2>universe complies. I did not need to solve the how.

795
00:52:47.679 --> 00:52:50.239
<v Speaker 2>It was enough, for once in a life marked by

796
00:52:50.320 --> 00:52:53.960
<v Speaker 2>counting and accounting, to stand quietly before an absence that

797
00:52:54.079 --> 00:52:58.840
<v Speaker 2>was shared, attended, and even loved. The ordinary can conceal

798
00:52:58.880 --> 00:53:03.400
<v Speaker 2>the impossible. Routines so often dismissed as dull, may shelter

799
00:53:03.480 --> 00:53:06.920
<v Speaker 2>mysteries too subtle or gentle to alarm us. I began

800
00:53:07.000 --> 00:53:10.000
<v Speaker 2>to wonder in that final week of careful checking, if

801
00:53:10.079 --> 00:53:12.199
<v Speaker 2>time itself could be shaped by what we agree to

802
00:53:12.239 --> 00:53:17.519
<v Speaker 2>remember or collectively ignore. Perhaps there are other places, other families,

803
00:53:17.719 --> 00:53:22.960
<v Speaker 2>other ledgers, with blank spaces, made meaningful only by their emptiness. What,

804
00:53:23.159 --> 00:53:26.199
<v Speaker 2>after all, is certainty but a comfort we choose, a

805
00:53:26.320 --> 00:53:29.480
<v Speaker 2>sum always rounded in our favor. There is relief in

806
00:53:29.559 --> 00:53:33.920
<v Speaker 2>such unanswerable gaps, a humility, and an invitation. When a

807
00:53:34.000 --> 00:53:37.559
<v Speaker 2>day can be lost so seamlessly and so gently, there

808
00:53:37.639 --> 00:53:41.039
<v Speaker 2>is wonder in every page left blank, and perhaps wisdom

809
00:53:41.039 --> 00:53:44.480
<v Speaker 2>in letting the missing be what it is. Saint Broad's

810
00:53:44.480 --> 00:53:48.199
<v Speaker 2>firth endures. The villagers move in their habitual grooves. I

811
00:53:48.320 --> 00:53:51.440
<v Speaker 2>join them for my morning walk, smile at familiar faces.

812
00:53:51.960 --> 00:53:54.840
<v Speaker 2>The journals on my shelf all skip the thirteenth year

813
00:53:54.880 --> 00:53:58.360
<v Speaker 2>by year. No one minds, no one seeks to change it.

814
00:53:58.400 --> 00:54:01.760
<v Speaker 2>Now only I, perhaps, apps and those who listen feel

815
00:54:01.760 --> 00:54:04.960
<v Speaker 2>the shape of the absence and the quiet, impossible magic

816
00:54:05.039 --> 00:54:08.000
<v Speaker 2>It makes of the mundane. If a day can be

817
00:54:08.039 --> 00:54:12.679
<v Speaker 2>lost in Saint Broad's Firth, quietly, universally and without concern,

818
00:54:13.199 --> 00:54:17.000
<v Speaker 2>how many other moments might slip through unnoticed elsewhere. I

819
00:54:17.079 --> 00:54:20.639
<v Speaker 2>find myself scanning my own old journals for blanks, gaps,

820
00:54:21.119 --> 00:54:24.920
<v Speaker 2>entries that never troubled me before. The true marvel I

821
00:54:24.960 --> 00:54:27.679
<v Speaker 2>suspect is not the missing day, but all the ones

822
00:54:27.719 --> 00:54:30.920
<v Speaker 2>we take for granted. Perhaps if we ever find a

823
00:54:30.960 --> 00:54:34.440
<v Speaker 2>gap in our memories or diaries, we should look more closely.

824
00:54:34.960 --> 00:54:38.159
<v Speaker 2>It might mean the world is stranger and richer than

825
00:54:38.199 --> 00:54:43.280
<v Speaker 2>we imagine. Midday bells chime across the rooftops, marking time

826
00:54:43.320 --> 00:54:48.199
<v Speaker 2>as faithfully as always, Another ordinary, extraordinary day is passing,

827
00:54:48.519 --> 00:54:50.960
<v Speaker 2>and none of us, not even the sunflowers in my

828
00:54:51.039 --> 00:54:54.119
<v Speaker 2>window sill, will ever know exactly what has been skipped.

829
00:54:56.639 --> 00:54:59.079
<v Speaker 1>And that is the end. Thank you for listening, and

830
00:54:59.159 --> 00:55:05.280
<v Speaker 1>I will see you in the next this one