An extra hour

Our clocks went back at the weekend. It’s dark now at 5 and light a little earlier in the mornings, and soon it will feel like it’s dark most of the day.

Sunrise from the back door

Reminders on the radio or tv about the clock change usually include the cliché of  ‘an hour extra in bed’. Well, my body woke at its usual time so that extra hour in bed seemed to just mean a very early breakfast. It’s never worked for me – as children, our body clocks are oblivious of clock time anyway. And so parents of young children never get an extra hour in bed either, just a disrupted timetable.

This year, as I spent the morning listening to music and it stretched on delightfully, I realised that I had been gifted an hour extra for that. It was as if I had chosen to have my extra hour right there in that Sunday morning - my favourite part of the week, extended for a whole hour.

I thought then that we could each choose, on that first day of clock-change, when to take that extra hour to suit our poetic selves. If you’re a darkness-loving person, you’d choose an extra hour of Sunday firelight and curtains drawn. If you’re a morning fitness person, you could choose to take it early and be up and out walking in the extra light hour. If after lunch is your favourite time, you might choose to take your extra hour napping or reading. And if you are child-free and your body lets you, you can choose that elusive extra hour in bed.

Suddenly, a bureaucratic change to the hour and the thoughtless, unlikely, idea of “an extra hour in bed” had shifted to “the gift of an extra hour to spend at your favourite point in this Sunday”.

By Monday, we have to forget the old timetable and get on with winter. First though, by attending to what delights us and making a choice, we get to gift ourselves a special Sunday.

Beyond the given.

Original painting on canvas, Lynne Cameron, 2018.