If it's the early hours of the last Sunday in October, then it must be time to put the clocks back an hour to Greenwich Mean Time. British Summer Time is over for another year, even though you'd have been hard pushed to describe any of the last month as Summer. Suddenly it feels as if Winter is on the way, which can make a lot of us feel SAD.
The concept of Daylight Saving is more than 200 years old, being yet another idea from the brimming head of American genius Benjamin Franklin. The UK first introduced BST in 1916 during World War One, and we've even endured Double Summer Time during World War 2 and between 1968 and 1971.
Summer Time could be seen as an elaborate con trick by Her Majesty's Government, hoodwinking the entire population of Britain into getting up an hour earlier than usual for seven months of the year. In March we go to work at 9am, and then suddenly in April we all go to work at 8am instead. And let's not forget that the extra hour makes October the longest month of the year, which is clearly not ideal.
Daylight Saving starts and finishes on different dates in different countries around the world, just to confuse air travellers. The European Union's obscure 9th EC Directive declares that our Summer Time will last from the last Sunday of March to the last Sunday of October, whereas the USA chooses to start on the first Sunday of April. The state of Arizona and the Canadian province of Saskatchewan choose not to recognise Daylight Saving at all, and in Australia Daylight Saving starts today on the day we finish and finishes in March on the day we begin.
Today in the UK is exactly eight weeks before the Winter Solstice, or shortest day of the year. The days get shorter for just eight weeks, and then longer again as the Spring draws near. I've never quite understood why we then have to wait another fourteen weeks after the shortest day before we're allowed to put the clocks forward again. All March evenings are an hour darker than they need to be, and Spring is held at bay for an unnecessary extra six weeks.
The extra hour this morning is good news for anyone who's out on the town clubbing it on a Saturday night, as you get an hour's extra hedonism for your money, but it's bad news for insomniacs, night watchmen and bar staff. For most of us it's great to have an extra hour in bed, but then we're forced to waste most of that hour later in the morning going round the house resetting clocks, watches, microwaves, hi-fis, video recorders, central heating systems, mobile phones and a few more clocks we forgot about the first time round.
Our UK clocks go back one hour at 0200 BST to 0100 GMT, so those of us who are awake get to experience 1am-2am twice. It's therefore possible to leave a nightclub at quarter to two and arrive home at quarter past one, half an hour before you left. Maybe time travel is indeed possible after all.
I'll leave you to guess which one of the two 01:00s I posted this at...
