I had returned to
Portsmouth and had spent my first night there with my mother. I awoke in bed to the sound of school children in a schoolyard nearby. I thought the children had recess at 9 o'clock and at 11 o'clock, so it must be one or the other. But when I looked at the clock beside my bed it said 18:00. I called to the next room where my mother was and asked her what time it was. She said it was 6 o'clock in the morning. I was surprised to hear that, but was glad it was still so early.I began thinking about how in Europe people commonly counted the hours between noon and midnight as 13 hundred, 14 hundred etc. up to 24 hundred. I didn't like that system which I found unnecessarily confusing. Clocks only had 12 numbers on them. If time had been meant to be told by using numbers between 13 and 24 then the clocks could have been made that way. The American system was definitely much simpler and better. I felt comfortable to be able to use it again.
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