every second counts

This weekend we changed the clocks for the end of British Summertime and in yesterday’s post I suggested that this must mean that Autumn has now, finally, begun.

On further consideration, though, I note that there is no equivalent official season to BST; there isn’t even a “British Wintertime”. We’re now in an officially mandated no-man’s season between the governmentally assigned summers that last approximately six months.

I don’t usually pay much attention to the times of sunrise and sunset, but looking at the weather forecast page on the BBC this morning I was struck by the near-symmetry of the times shown:

So today we have a day just one minute short of ten hours.

But although time flies like an arrow, it doesn’t seem to fly quite as straight as it might. Apparently, London, which is only a short journey away if you can afford a non-stopping train – and will seem even closer if they finally put in the HS2 – gets three minutes extra:

A week today, here in the Midlands, we’ll have lost nearly half an hour, and the day will be down to nine hours 33 minutes.

On the same day, London will have four minutes longer than us.

Of course I’m looking at figures rounded to minutes; perhaps if the seconds were shown, the story would be a little different.

Whatever the details, given the way each day is shortening and time is speeding by, I have wasted rather more time than is reasonable on fiddling around with this post. I guess I’ll just end with this:

Time flies like an arrow
Fruit flies like a banana
Green flies like roses
Zip flies jam.