Daylight saving

All week long people were tweetering in the office about putting the clocks forward this weekend, and how it would be such a lovely thing to have an extra hour of sun to enjoy in the evening. I'm afraid I could not share their relentless enthusiasm. I hate putting the clocks forward. I feel almost affronted at having one hour of my life taken away, and worse, one hour of sleep taken away. It's horrible going to bed at, say, 11pm and having to teach yourself to think that it's already midnight. Or getting up at what reads as 8am but what is actually still, according to your body as it screams with fatigue, 7am.

I noticed there was a Bill proposed in the House Of Lords this week to not put the clocks back this autumn and simply carry on with BST through to next spring, when we would put our clocks forward once more, in effect introducing Double Summer Time. This would, apparently, ensure lighter evenings (but criminally dark mornings) all year round and ostensibly make the country a happier place.

No no no! It'd still be pitch black at 9am in the middle of winter! Whole months would go by when you'd never see the sun rise thanks to your being in work the time it came up! And what about the entire top half of the country? Scotland wouldn't see the sun until it was time for elevenses. It's a typical South of England-skewed mindset, the product of people with too much time on their ennobled, unelected hands. Though I read it has been tried before in the late 60s, and of course has its precedent during the Second World War when to compensate for the blackout the entire country had its time summarily shifted forward two whole hours.

We do get the hour back, I know, but it's not until October. And the state I'm in at the moment, I need every hour of sleep I can get. Grrr. Why can't they rob the hour from, say, a Friday afternoon?