Sunday, 30 October 2011

Daylight saving

Is today officially the best day in the year? 

Pre-children that wonderful, lazy, extra hour in bed.  Always in bed, obviously.  Why spend an extra hour anywhere else?  Post-children, the hour is less relaxing but so much more appreciated.  I spend 364 days of the year wishing for another hour and today I get it.

And they want to take it away from me...

Am I the only person in the country who thinks this is an awful idea?  It's not just, honest, because I'm now in Scotland. I've felt like this ever since I heard of these proposals.  We're told that lives would be saved because evenings would be lighter when children are coming back from school, but surely that would be counter-balanced by the darker mornings when the same children are going to the same schools.  Calling time by a different number isn't going to change the fact that we don't, whether in Land's End or John o'Groats, get enough light at this time of year.  I should know.  My birthday, in mid-December, gets less than seven hours of daylight, and to change that I'd have to go a lot further South than the South of the UK.

But my biggest complaint?  It's the dark mornings.  Wasn't that the best thing about this morning?  Whatever time you got up, however much your children didn't appreciate the effect of that extra hour, or extra glass of wine last night, wasn't it wonderful that it was so light?  And isn't the bliss of not getting up in the dark, even if only for a few extra weeks, far, far greater than the misery of dark evenings?  I rather like dark evenings.  I like the childish excitement of shops with their lights on, especially once the decorations start to go up, I like the anticipation of a warm house, and the welcoming glow as you open the door.  And oh, I so much prefer it to the brain-assaulting blare of the alarm clock when your eyeballs tell you it's still the middle of the night.

Today was actually horrid.  B and I were out last night and were late and tired. The children were up at some horrendous hour, and my parents are staying which always stresses me, but I still think today's great. 

Please don't take it away.


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6 comments:

  1. Nikkii30 October 2011 at 20:58

    It's the one day of the year you look at the clock and go "oooh it's ONLY...." and it actually is "only..." love it :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. AGuidingLife30 October 2011 at 22:17

    I bought a sunlight alarm clock thingy this year. The light slowly brightens up at the preset time so you wake up like the sun is rising. Im liking it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Potty Mummy31 October 2011 at 11:03

    Here in Russia they just abolished DST. That stinks, not only because it's so dark in the mornings now (and in mid-winter it won't get light until gone 9.30am) but because we are now 4, not 3 hrs ahead of the UK, making travel & communication with people back home that much more difficult... Russia, marching to it's own beat yet again.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Karen Lizzie1 November 2011 at 23:25

    I remember the last time they experimented with this. I was at school and experienced the dark mornings. I did not like it. It feels unnatural to get up and go out into the dark. As things are at the moment you only have that experience for a very tiny part of the year. I think people who suffer SAD and the like must be seriously affected by this.

    Personally I would not mind if they made the opposite decision and just did not put the clocks forward an hour in the Spring. However I am uncertain how much this would affect some parts of the country in the evening.

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  5. Harriet8 November 2011 at 19:54

    Nikkii - abso-blooming-lutely. You should have written the post, you've hit the nutshell on the head in one (or something).

    Kelloggsville - Interesting... Am quite tempted.

    Potty Mummy - Noooooooooo! That's so typically infuriatingly Russian. And just when you've got people used to the idea that you're 3 hours ahead. aaargh!

    Karen - I didn't realise they'd done it before. I wonder why they're trying again now.

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  6. Studyneos30 December 2023 at 15:23

    Great reead

    ReplyDelete

I know. I'm sorry. I hate these word recognition, are you a robot, guff things too, but having just got rid of a large number of ungrammatical and poorly spelt adverts for all sorts of things I don't want, and especially don't want on my blog, I'm hoping that this will mean that only lovely people, of the actually a person variety, will comment.

So please do. Comments are great...

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