An Englishman in Verona

Benjamin Franklin is a tosser. Unprovoked? No: I’ve discovered that this clock-changing business is his fault. Admittedly he only suggested moving the clocks forward in the summer - which is a good thing - but he also suggested moving them back at winter. Why? Can’t we keep them forward?

Having your evenings are suddenly snatched from you like this is awful. Days suddenly fall into one of two categories: (i) go to work in the halflight and come home in the dark; a miserable experience which leads to (ii) getting pissed the night before because there’s nothing else to do, sleeping in with the hangover and then realising that it gets dark in one hour and you haven’t had breakfast yet. Sorry, too late: the day’s over.

I’m sure I remember being told as a kid that the clocks were changed so farmers had more light in the morning. But none of my peers reports the same. Did I make it up? Maybe, but then again I was raised in an innercity where we have special lessons on the evils of countryfolk (What sort of an agenda is ‘Liberty and Livelihood’ anyway? Who’s gonna disagree with that? Now piss off out of our city.). Us boys even had special ‘How to be a bastard’ lessons at school whilst the girls were been taught about, snigger, periods.