You lost sixty minutes from your life this morning when the clocks went forward. Need to play catch-up? Here are ten things you could remove from your Sunday to get that hour back.
Don't read the Sunday papers: You already know what'll be in them. A report on how Tony Blair's career is finished, a well-known TV star caught in a compromising position, wild speculation about footballers and/or share prices, the same arts reviews you read elsewhere earlier in the week, details of a very special porcelain thimble collection, lots of pictures of food you'll never cook, lots of pictures of property you'll never own and lots of adverts for cars you'll never drive. Don't read the Sunday papers. Time saved: 1 hour. Don't go to church: Even if God exists, He's not going to mind you missing your weekly trip down to His house just this once. It's not even Palm Sunday yet for heaven's sake, let alone Easter, so you won't be missing much. And if God doesn't exist, well, you could save an hour in bed every week. Don't go to church. Time saved: 1 hour. Don't go to IKEA: Every Sunday sees the Swedish flatpack cathedral packed out by couples with nothing better to do, shuffling slowly in procession through the showroom antechambers, pausing for meatballs in the self-service restaurant, descending into the retail scrum of the market hall, then queueing for an eternity at the understaffed checkouts. Don't go to IKEA, go shopping somewhere else instead. Time saved: 1 hour. Have your roast dinner down the pub: A Sunday roast takes hours of preparation, requires deft juggling of oven space and saucepans whilst cooking, and then you waste even longer trying to wash up all that fat-speckled bakeware after the event. Why not let your local publican take the strain instead? Sure you'll spend extra hours down the pub as a result, but not as long as cooking the roast yourself would have taken you. Have your roast dinner down the pub. Time saved: 1 hour. Give up tea and coffee for the day: Think of the time you waste daily waiting for the kettle to boil, waiting for the teabag to brew, standing around in Starbucks waiting for the barista to froth some milk and then being unable to sleep because your caffeinated head is still buzzing. Give up tea and coffee for the day. Time saved: 1 hour. Only watch the second half of the Arsenal match: The first half doesn't matter, because the result happens in the second. Statistics show there are more goals in the second halves of matches too. And that Manchester United team, they're not worth watching anyway. Only watch the second half of the Arsenal match. Time saved: 1 hour. Ignore the boat race: I went last year. It was the most exciting Boat Race in history and it was still rubbish. This year either Oxford or Cambridge will win, and next year ITV have won already, so why bother? Ignore the Boat Race (and associated programming). Time saved: 1 hour. Skip an hour of Sunday TV: Put your clocks forward at 8pm tonight, rather than 1am this morning, and you can miss both Heartbeat on ITV and Born And Bred on BBC1. Don't look backwards, jump forward. Skip an hour of Sunday TV. Time saved: 1 hour. Don't put all your clocks forward: It takes forever to go round your house changing every single timepiece by an hour - the video recorder, the alarm clock, your watch, your other six watches, the hi-fi, the microwave, the oven, five wallclocks, your mobile, the central heating, that cheap digital clock in the spare room, the answering machine, etc. They'll all only need to be changed back again in the autumn, so why not leave them alone today and just add one hour mentally for the rest of the summer? Don't put all your clocks forward. Time saved: 1 hour. Fly to America: The US doesn't change to Daylight Saving until next week, so if you flew over there there'd be no need to lose an hour from this Sunday at all. Fly to the west coast and you'd gain another 8 hours on top of that, which would still leave you time to do everything further up this list as well. Just don't fly back here next Sunday or you'll lose it all again. Fly to America. Time saved: up to 9 hours.
