Clock

Summertime ends tonight. Always a sombre occasion, bidding farewell to another season, particularly one associated with sunshine and holidays and long balmy evenings. Especially when the weather was fairly ropey for most of the summer: you don't quite feel you had your money's worth. Already the temperature is dropping stone-like, and nights drawing in alarmingly early. And it will only get worse: tomorrow everything will happen an hour earlier: it will be getting dark before you have quite finished afternoon tea.

It is always confusing, this clock-changing palaver. It is somehow counter-intuitive: you have to stop and think quite hard about what is going to happen. What are you meant to do with your clocks? All of them? And which bit of the day, if any, gets lighter? And what about the cat – does she have any concept of British Summer Time, or will she expect to be fed an hour earlier? Or later? Perhaps it's just me: maybe other people can cope with these mental gymnastics. And am I meant to go to bed an hour later tonight? Or sleep in an hour longer tomorrow morning? They never tell you these things.

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day.