Looking forward to the seasons

Seasonal indications form a key part of the orrery by Roland Jarvis with date, moon phase, signs of the Zodiac and seasonal guidance

What a meal we make of clock changing time! What misinformation and nonsense gets spouted too! There is a wall of commentary about jet lag equivalents, apparently as if we had flown to Reykjavik (some chance), and about people's psychological states and the damage that putting the clocks back can cause.

In fact there are few facts about any of it, but it gives a chance for an expert to add their comments in the hope of some coverage. So, yes why not, let's look at it and add more comment to the soup.

Why do we change the clocks at all? To avoid it being dark until 9 a.m. in the middle of winter, especially in Scotland, which isn’t in anybody's interests. Sure it will be light for a little longer in the afternoon but if we didn’t change then it would be dark both ways in winter at the times when people tend to travel.

There are various organisations highlighting the dangers of darker roads in the afternoons, carefully avoiding any focus on the increased dangers of darker roads in the mornings when actually there is more chance of overnight ice lingering and being a very real danger. There are literally no useable figures on the effects of this, so anybody pretending that there are and trying to claim that changing the clocks is dangerous is misinforming you and simply lieing.

I say 'useable' figures because I suspect there are some from the three year period in the late 1960s when year-round British Summer Time was tried, but given the changes in roads and traffic since they will be hopelessly inapplicable for the present day.

Apparently turning the clocks back gives people 'mental anxiety'. Really? Are they genuinely going to say that they wouldn’t have mental anxiety at 9 a.m. in the middle of winter when it is still dark and they are well in to the process of their day?

As a motorcyclist my safety is important to me and anything that lightens the mornings in the winter and clears any ice that has formed just has to be a good thing. Now that we have put the clocks back I can look forward to another month of daylight when I leave the house at 7 a.m. on two wheels. In fact it gives me mental pleasure looking forward to the clocks going back to get that extra daylight and then again when I look forward to the clocks going forward to welcome the long and reliable British summer. Clock changing is as much of a marker of the seasons as the leaves falling. Long may it continue.