I know what you'll be doing on Sunday
As if getting teenagers out of bed isn’t hard enough...
Knock once—silence.
Knock twice—still nothing.
Crack the door open and a groggy voice, thick with betrayal, mumbles, “Five more minutes.”
Except on Sunday, five minutes is actually sixty-five, because British Summer Time (BST) has swooped in overnight, snatching an hour and leaving the entire household in a state of temporal chaos.
Yep, you—along with millions of others—will be dealing with the aftermath of what can only be described as actual, literal daylight robbery.
But fear not—the only way to repair relations with those blaming you for their morning funk is to arm yourself with the facts of who, when, and why this annual heist occurs.
And, crucially, to remind them that it’s got absolutely nothing to do with you.
So, with luck, you may even get more than a grunt after tossing them an oddly shaped Tupperware, precariously full of cereal and milk (minus the spoon—dammit, who forgot the spoon? Just drink it, and for the love of all things holy, don’t spill it down your front or all over the seat!), before weaving through morning traffic like a game of live-action Tetris to wherever you needed to be.
The idea of shifting the clocks forward wasn’t the brainchild of a sleep-deprived villain hell-bent on ruining Sunday mornings. It was actually proposed by a resourceful Brit named William Willett in the early 1900s.
A builder by trade and a keen horse rider, Willett detested the waste of daylight hours.
In 1907, he suggested moving the clocks forward to maximise evening sunlight, allowing for longer leisure hours (and, presumably, fewer stubbed toes in darkened parlours).
The government took its time—pun intended—but by 1916, in the throes of World War I, Britain officially adopted BST to conserve coal.
From a physics perspective, the concept of ‘losing’ an hour is as slippery as a politician’s promise.
Not only does your Sunday start an hour late, but your morning routine feels more like a desperate survival mechanism than a ritual, and your pet is convinced you’ve betrayed their breakfast schedule.
Yet, the laws of thermodynamics insist that energy cannot be created or destroyed.
Time is the same—so where does this missing hour go?
Like energy, time isn’t vanishing; it’s just being redistributed. Think of it like a software update: the system reboots, skips an hour, and your body clock is left buffering (until October).
For those in STEM fields—astronomers, software engineers, chronobiologists—this temporal shift is more than just an inconvenience.
Computers, financial markets, and GPS satellites must adjust for this intentional blip in time.
Even airline schedules require precision adjustments to avoid paradoxes worthy of a sci-fi novel.
The shift isn’t just an inconvenience—it has genuine physiological effects on every single one of us. Studies show an increase in heart attacks, strokes, and even workplace accidents in the days following the change.
Your circadian rhythm, a finely tuned biological metronome, doesn’t take kindly to forced rewiring. This is why sleep scientists have long debated whether we should simply abandon the practice altogether.
Beyond the great clock conundrum, the idea of manipulating time can be a great springboard for super-curricular exploration.
🔭Budding physicists can dive into the mechanics of timekeeping and relativity.
📝 Creative writers can spin dystopian tales of societies where time is currency.
🕰️ Artists might experiment with representations of time—fractured clocks, shifting light, or abstract visualisations of the lost hour itself.
This is more than just a mild inconvenience; it’s a conversation starter, a debate waiting to happen, and a gateway to some seriously fascinating topics.
Countries worldwide have started questioning the necessity of this biannual meddling with time. The European Union has been flirting with the idea of scrapping seasonal clock changes altogether. The debate rages on: do we stick to a fixed time or continue this tradition of collective jet lag?
Whatever your stance, one thing is certain—this Sunday, as the hour vanishes into the time-space continuum, you have a choice: embrace the extra evening light with a smug sense of solar superiority or unleash your wrath on whoever dared wake you up.
Until next time,
Nici
P.S.
Don’t worry, I won’t judge if you’re still battling the alarm on Sunday (or Monday)—adjusting takes time.
But, if you do manage to wake up short of your usual hour in bed, maybe you can use the extra daylight to finally finish that art project or start that creative writing piece about a world where time is controlled by teenagers. Who knows? It might just make getting out of bed worth it.
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