British Summer Time ended at 2am on Sunday, October 30.
Some people may be out dancing in a nightclub until the early hours and whoop with joy to the prospect of another hour of partying.
Some may be oblivious to this overnight change until they reach for their mobile phones or switch on the TV in the morning.The lucky ones will languish in bed until noon, when they will stretch out an arm from under the duvet to turn their clock back to 11am, then drift off to sleep again. And some will be downing their third cup of coffee by 6am. Not through choice, more because their small child has been awake since 5.30am (we are talking ‘new’ time – so I really mean 4.30am).
In a cruel twist, the Sleep Council has declared October 30 is National Sleep-In Day. What irony is this? What a slap in the face for sleep-deprived parents who will be nursing a cup of Joe, closing one eye then the other in an attempt to mimic a sort of dolphin sleep mode (dolphins sleep with one eye open, resting one side of their brain at a time), as their children leap off the sofa, empty packets of cereal on the kitchen floor and watch Peppa Pig on a continuous loop.
And if fellow members of this motley band of zombified guardians are anything like me, they will spend the remainder of the day, if not the week, all out of kilter.
If not just sleep the extra hour effects – it’s mealtimes, too.
I keep one clock in our house set at the ‘old’ time, just so I know when tummies are likely to start grumbling.
So, on Day One of switching to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) breakfast might be at 11am, lunch at 2.30pm and our evening meal at 6.30pm.
That’s fine for a day or two, but it’s not practical to dine as if we are on holiday in the Med, plus there’s no chance of anyone (me) taking an afternoon siesta.
Secondly, my brain, which is fuzzy at best, thanks to the unpredictable amount and quality of sleep that I get, doesn’t cope well with the tiresome process of adding an hour on. Or should that be subtracting?
See, I am confused already.
Still, let’s look for a positive: In the depths of winter it grows dark at four o’clock-ish.
With the strategic placement of black-out blinds and plenty of milky drinks, I might be able to bring bedtime forward by at least a couple of hours.
With any luck, the kids may not even notice…
Pah! Who am I kidding?
You can read my tips for surviving the first few days after the clocks go back here.
About Sam
Sam Curtis, 46, lives in Lincoln, in a house that’s not as clean or tidy as she’d like, with her husband and their two children, a tweenage daughter and a threenage son.
www.facebook.com/samcurtisEcho
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