THE DORMICE HAVE GOT IT RIGHT

Mrs. Snopper awakes from a blissful sleep to discover that the clocks have been put back by an hour....and wonders why she didn`t wake up an hour earlier.

Soon she will have the twice yearly ritual of going round the house making sure all the other timers are properly adjusted to the winter timetable. This is no easy feat - we have possibly 15 or so `devices` which require adjusting, from ordinary clocks to things like timers on microwaves, ovens, etc.

But as she is the technician in the house, I know that they will all be running properly to time by about this time tomorrow, leaving me only to look after the clock in the car. Now, I have struggled in the past to understand not only the instructions in the car`s manual but also the physical act of changing the clock in the car....so I have hitherto declined to make the adjustment and left the car clock alone.

This approach has had the distinct advantage of saving me an awful lot of trouble and confusion whilst at the same time leaving me with the full and certain knowledge that, for the next five months of the year, the clock in the car will be an hour fast. I know that - no-one else needs to know what the time is in my car - so what difference will it make if I don`t bother to change it?

Thankfully, the computer seems to have changed itself.....but then it always did know more than I did anyway. It just remains for me to look forward to that cheerful last Sunday in March, when the clocks get changed again (well, some of them) and we can `leap forward in Spring` once more. Dormice don`t have these problems - they`ve got it sussed.