On October 25th UK summertime officially ended, the clocks went back and we reverted to GMT again. The mornings are now lighter and the evenings darker. Despite the prevalence of smartphones and other devices which alter the time for you automatically, there will always be one person you know who didn’t get the memo.
When will the infernal darkness end..?
We won’t see lighter nights again until March 27th 2016, when the clocks will wind forward again at 1am.
How dark does the UK get in winter?
In the UK, the maximum 16 hours and 50 minutes of sunlight – on the longest day in June (the summer solstice) – dwindles to just seven hours and 40 minutes six months later in December (the winter solstice).
Hibernation for the nation?
Today is the day Britons go into “hibernation” mode, according to a new study. Researchers have discovered almost half of us (42 per cent) will batten down the hatches for the winter as the nights draw in.
Stocking up on new winter socks (31 per cent), slippers (21 per cent) and woolly jumpers (29 per cent) – is all part of the human hibernation process, according to the study.
A further 33 per cent said they start preparing for winter by doing a “winter food shop”, with more than one in ten (12 per cent) saying today is the day they stock up on wine and beer to get them through the winter months.
The study of almost 2,000 Britons commissioned by a home furnishing retailer revealed the average adult only ventures out socially once a week in the winter months.
And they only expect to see around three-and-a-half hours of daylight on weekdays, but slightly more at the weekend (3hrs 45mins).
Despite the fact 40 per cent of people said today is when the “winter blues” officially kick in, one in three (36 per cent) of those who took part in the survey said they didn’t mind the colder months.
Daylight Saving: Whose idea was it?
A man called William Willett introduced the idea of British Summer Time, also known as Daylight Saving Time, in 1907. He wanted to prevent people from wasting valuable hours of light during summer mornings.
He published a pamphlet called ‘The Waste of Daylight’ in a bid to get people out of bed earlier by changing the nation’s clocks.
Willett proposed that the clocks should be advanced by 80 minutes in four incremental steps during April and reversed the same way during September.
Willett then spent the rest of his life trying to convince people his scheme was a good one. Sadly, he died of the flu in 1915 at the age of 58; a year before Germany adopted his clock-changing plan on April 30, 1916 when the clocks were set forward at 11 pm.
Britain followed suit a month later on May 21.
