After weeks during which I wondered, ‘is the central heating actually working?’, today I got my answer. Waking up to the most beautiful blue skies, with barely a cloud on the horizon, my partner spoke the magic words: “the heating’s on“. Confirmation that the inevitable had finally to be acknowledged. I could no longer carry on wearing shorts during every daylight hour, and most evenings too, because it’s too bloody cold.
I have now gone the whole hog and retrieved my joggers and my Wigan Warriors slippers from storage, as well as one of my North Face fleece tops and that’s just for indoors. In all seriousness, it’s the least wonderful time of the year.
Worse than that, we’re just over two weeks away from that annual farce of putting the clocks back, arguably the most stupid thing we do. But let’s remember why we do it.
The clocks go back every year because, since 1916, the government decided we needed to conserve fuel, in particular coal, and boost wartime production. Let me just say that last bit again: boost wartime production.
Now, I am not the sharpest tool in the box but even I can see a flaw with that. The war that started in 1914 ended in 1918. Unless I have grossly miscalculated, the current year is 2026. We have been happily plunging ourselves into darkness mid afternoon in order to support the war effort for a war that ended 108 years ago. If the first morning of the heating coming on is the least wonderful time of the year, the first day of nighttime beginning at tea time is far, far worse.
As we head into the absolute depths of winter, which for me means sometime in November, I suppose the changing of the clock hardly makes any difference. It’s dark all the time anyway. Tinkering with the ‘daylight saving‘ doesn’t save daylight at all. It just moves it around a bit. It’s in the New Year, when the days are getting longer you don’t notice the difference, but you would, far more, if it was brighter later. Instead, we have to wait until spring is well underway – spring begins on 1st March by the way – to enjoy lighter evenings.
I suppose I could just get up an hour earlier to enjoy that extra hour of daylight at the end of the day, but it’s such a pain in the arse and with my miserable memory I’d soon forget to do it. But my solution would not be to end the changing of the clocks. I’d take the nuclear option. I’d go for double summer time.
To start things off next March, I’d put the clocks forwards by two hours instead of one. Within a few months, it’s broad daylight by 5.00 am anyway but the evenings, that’s a whole different, and better, ball game. Instead of it still being light at 10.00 pm during the height of summer, it would still be light at 11.00 pm. In the unlikely event we got more summers like this one, can you imagine still sitting in the back garden, quaffing a chilled Rosé while reading your latest book, while the bongs of News At Ten bang away when it is still broad daylight?
I know some folk object to my Grand Design, particularly Scottish farmers, so even here I have a solution. I am all in favour of devolution, so why can’t the UK government leave the matter to the Scottish parliament to decide? If our cousins north of the border want to operate in a different time zone to England, then why not allow them to? It seems so simple to me.
In the autumn, we would, as usual, put the clocks back, but they’d still be an hour ahead of where they used to be. Summer time in winter, double summer time in summer. Seriously, what is not to love about that?
The heating would still come on in October and my shorts would still need to be returned to my clothes drawers (sorry ladies) but wouldn’t that transference of all that lovely light to later in the day be so worth it?
Winter, for me, is the time it isn’t summer, so most of the year. Can’t we make a minor change that would make things brighter later? Please?
