Clock change day…

Five-o'clock and it’s dark.

Why should it be that no matter what, whenever the clocks are about to change, it seems like a surprise despite it happening twice EVERY year? Today is my day, and today is that day when everything is slightly wrong - clock change day; how I hate it. It feels like time is blurry, even running backwards a little, maybe forwards too quickly; how can sixty short minutes make such a difference to how I feel?

It makes me feel as if I'm living underwater.

It started badly. My routine was tipped, topsy-turvy, into a cocked hat by the rearranging of time and the changing of the clocks, my usual Sunday routine undone by the change back to Greenwich Mean Time. I got up too early and started my day knowing that all day I would think that it was later than it was, which will lead me to open the RED earlier than I should, eat my meals at all the wrong times, and go to bed far earlier than my usual 10.30ish.

So, my routine all messed up I found myself outside of Tesco at 9.30 waiting for them to open. I didn’t mind much as I’d been awake since the old 4.00am (5.00am) and, after trying and then giving up on going back to sleep, up at the new 7.30am (6.30am). Eventually they opened, and I purchased what I needed and then went home to prepare lunch before realising I hadn’t even had breakfast.

Overwhelmed by these sixty minute differences I turned on the radio to listen to the Archers to find that I’d missed it – either too late or too early I have no idea – and when Radio 4 announced that it was two-o'clock my body and the light outside told me something different. For some weird reason as I switched the lights on at three o'clock I felt that I needed to run a bath. Usually I never bath before eight. Did I mention I hate this clock-changing thing?

Of course darkness will come earlier as winter begins to settle in. I’d prefer lighter evenings, keep UK time on Summer Time, especially in winter when it starts getting dark around 4pm. This of course would mean that the Scottish, being so far north, would have a daylight problem due to the fact that the sun wouldn’t rise until almost 10am. But they could always vote themselves a different time zone and who cares anyway?

The idea of British (including Scotland) Summer Time was proposed in 1907 by William Willett. He campaigned to move clocks forward by 80 minutes in 20-minute increments at the beginning of spring and then go back to Greenwich Mean Time in the autumn. Now that would be messy don’t you think? Moving the clocks 4 times; nobody would ever remember what time it was and we’d all be running on different times like the church-clock timed villagers of the past - where each village ran to church-clock time with each clock differing greatly.

Summer Time came during 1916, an Act of Parliament defining the concept of Summer Time and GMT+1 started in the spring. Double summer time was then introduced during the Second World War and lasted until July 1945. By the 1980s countries in western and central Europe decided to coordinate the date and time of their clock changes. Pity we didn’t go with them and run on European time, although I’m sure they will tell us too eventually.

I’d like to see a return to the wartime double summer time plan, the clocks going forward by one hour throughout the whole year and then forward again one hour in spring and back one hour in autumn - I think.

Yes, it’s all so bloody confusing.

Oh well, Five-o'clock and it's DARK, and so it begins…