lagged

Air-travel without the journey, plane, airport or destination - NEW for this summer time!

Get all the holiday-induced jetlag you could ever envy by living in the UK when the clocks change. For optimal results, make sure you are domicile (or on a long-term visit) over the last weekend of March when, all of a sudden, hour hands across the nation unceremoniously slide an extra hour down clock faces.

I had to scrape myself out of bed this morning – my maladjusted bodyclock thought it was 06:15, afterall, and getting to sleep last night was a long process, my mind refusing to shut down an hour earlier. I am not hungry but the flashing red digits on our oversized newsroom clocks tell me it is time for my lunch break.

On one hand, this is the beginning of the loveliness that is BST – lazy afternoons that slip idly away at 10pm and busy, bright mornings that awake youthfully early.

On the other hand, one hour’s time change means it’ll take 24 hours to recalibrate my internal rythyms and feel normal once again, according to NASA. It’s jetlag, without the jet. But, like most holidayish components, it’s worth it.

When the clocks go back

An ex-boyfriend once told me I have the CV of a cat.

Now, just to make it clear from the outset, I don’t have a penchant for answering nature’s call in gravel and I am not in the habit of sunbathing on my sooty terraced-garden walls. But I must concede, I am pretty good at relaxing and, if am being completely honest, I do fancy myself a superior sleeper.

In fact, I like to think that if all else fails, I could one day go semi-professional – my ZzzCV is indeed a testimony to some of my more impressive reposes and being able to rest contorted in even the smallest, bumpiest, noisiest third-world bus has its advantages – not least on over-crowded tubes. I have slept cocooned in newspaper on ferries, under my office printing desk (only once, after the Christmas party and before my boss thankfully declared me unfit for work that day), in the engine-room of a Canadian ski resort gondola and once for an hour in a helicopter above Jordan, rotor-blades chopping away, oblivious to all but the dusty landing amongst Amman’s biblical hills.

This is why the last Sunday of October is, in my book, one the best days of the whole year. Who can deny the utter luxury of an extra hour in bed? And the delicious reverse jet-lag the following Monday? Not to mention the brighter mornings, making it easier for all but the borderline-crazy (stockbrokers and news editors) to rise on the right side of bed and face the rush-hour commute with unaccustomed positivity.

I have always been told that the clocks go back so that children won’t have to walk to school in the dark. It is a happy accident, then, that the safety of children (on their ankle-whacking scooters), means that clubbers across the city get an extra hour of bang for their buck on Saturday night. In fact, some of the only people who must hate this weekend are bar-workers.

So, as winter resolutely marches towards us and the sun slips further out of reach, the end of British Summer Time is a sweet moment in my calendar. It is an autumnal blip of happiness that actually, when you really think about it, makes us all temporarily a smidgen younger – and a whole hour better-rested.