Are you sad? Or maybe the question should be, do you suffer from SAD? SAD (seasonally adjusted disorder) is not something with which I have been diagnosed – yet! – so the opportunity remains for me to acquire another debilitating mental health condition, but I do know I feel much better when the sun shines.
Take today. It’s below freezing here in South Gloucestershire, but there is not a cloud in the sky. The view is clear as far as the eye can see, which in my case is the houses opposite and the houses at the back, but it makes me feel so much better! I had not really noticed, until I played some golf earlier this week, that it’s staying lighter longer too and it is getting much easier to find my golf balls when they slip off into the rough areas away from the fairway.
Mainly, I look forward to 1st March. Not because this year it’s son number one’s 21st birthday, although that is definitely something to which we are all excited about, but it feels like the beginning of spring. It stays light beyond 6.00 pm and the world is, for me, quite literally a brighter place. Which leads me to my suggestion. Let’s change how we change the clocks in the autumn and in the spring. My unlikely appointment of prime minister would see me bring about many changes in society but the clocks would be my immediate priority so here is what I will do, starting this year: nothing. Yes, that’s right, I’ll do nothing this autumn and British Summer Time (BST) will stay with us all winter. But the big change will occur in the spring of 2016 when I shall move the clocks forward by one hour giving us BST+1 in the summer and in the autumn I will put the clocks back one hour so, starting from autumn 2016, all winters will be in BST. All right, mornings will be a bit darker but my change will not in itself bring about less daylight hours. Just go to bed at a different time and get up the next day at a different time. Easy.
I know it is Scottish farmers who have complained most about any change to BST+1 but this crazy idea to change the clocks, which was brought in for World War One and then forgotten about, must go and surely devolution is a good reason to do it. Allow the Scottish parliament, if they want, to stick with their own time zone whilst we in England and Wales (and Northern Ireland, if they want) have the time zone we want. Let all these people, whose names sound like fish (Salmond, Sturgeon), decide for themselves.
I’m not SAD today though. Cold, yes, but not SAD. There’s definitely something better about the sunny days and let’s make the days a little bit longer, even if they aren’t really.
