Dear LPG,

I am sure you can tell that I wrote this message in advance.   I want to ask each LPG reader if he or she got up an hour later this morning and, if so,  how hard did you have to work in order to  catch up?

Did it go unnoticed; did you wake only to find that it was significantly darker this morning or did you not even notice until you put the radio or television on only to discover the newsreader and your clocks in disagreement with each other?  Then there is the big question of which way did the clocks actually go?  We are reminded by so many newsreaders for weeks in advance of the Sunday when this will happen each year and still every year many of us forget. 

I think that I speak for most of us when I say that, for us retired readers, it usually does not make a lot of difference at all really, but I remember as a young office worker, managing to stay completely ignorant.  

I remember not noticing the loss for 24 whole hours one year.  I dragged myself up that morning, which was one of those mornings after the Saturday night before.  I lived alone then, as I do now, but when I was young that just meant that I could do what I liked when I liked on Sundays, which was to spend most of the morning asleep after which the important activity of eating a lot would kick in by early afternoon.  Few shops were open on Sundays in the early seventies and the winters were a lot more severe than they are these days, so staying in the warm was the way forward for me on Sunday evenings. 

By Monday I had caught up with the rest of the world but when the alarm went off and I started to prepare for work, I can remember having a bit of a moan at the radio DJ for getting the time wrong.  I did all the things I usually do and left for work on time, but the trains were all out of sync and I got to work that morning only to find that everyone else was well into their working day and that I was late.  I remember trying to explain my tardiness to my boss and for once being seriously unable to do so, but he was very understanding.  It was not until the person who’s desk was opposite mine suggested that I should have said that I had not realised that the clocks had gone forwards, that I realised that I had lost an hour without knowing for all that time.

Apparently we pensioners don’t need so much sleep as we get older, so for those who spend a lot of time awake during the night, this is the one night in the year when you get to  spend a little bit less of the night thinking about all sorts.

However, if you are a church goer, can I remind you again that you need to leave an hour early today  and,  if England’s political future is still worrying you, this is the one day this year that you will genuinely have one less hour in it to worry about the whole Brexit question.

CJ, Lewisham