Ben Lowry: The darkness when the hour goes back in late autumn days bothers me less than it did, because time seems to go so quickly
Recently, I wrote about NI reaching that gloomy point in the calendar, the autumnal equinox – when it gets more dark than light for six months.
(For Ben Lowry’s main column about growing awareness of mass immigration, even in Ireland, click here)
Now we have passed an equally gloomy one, the hour going back.
In fact, the hour going back is even worse – unless you are an early bird. If you are someone, like me, who is inclined towards waking later in the morning then it suddenly seems as if you have lost an hour of the day (not so for those bright-eyed types who leap out of bed before dawn, and therefore are awake for all of the daylight hours, regardless of what the clock reads).
But I find this gloomy point in the calendar less traumatic than I did when I was younger – we seem to go from summer to the clocks going back astonishingly quickly, but then it all ends quite soon too. In next to no time – little more than a month from now – the days will be getting longer again.
I remember when I worked at News International, London in the 1990s, in my 20s, driving to work for a late shift, at around 6pm, and seeing it getting dark in September and thinking with a sense of dread – there is six months of this darkness ahead.
Now I don’t think that, because I know that six months will sail by.
Having said that, I would not want to dwell too much on how fast time goes – or I might start getting gloomy again …
Ben Lowry (@Benlowry2) is News Letter editor