Nearly forgot to rant

OK, you know what this is about, don't you. Tonight we are required (on pain of being terminally confused for six months) to set our clocks an hour fast and keep them that way all summer (and beyond). We will then participate in the mass delusion that we have lighter evenings.

Aaaaaargh!

I think I have expressed this in more nuanced fashion at the other end of the year, last year, and the year before.

But what I hadn't realised, until my mother pointed it out to me some forty two years after the event, is that I have been jibbed of my rightful birthdate by this absurd farrago. I was born (so I always believed) on July 25th (oh bugger, there goes my identity) at eight minutes past midnight. But that's eight minutes past midnight British Summer Time, so really eight minutes past eleven the previous day. My birthday should actually be July 24th. It's a bit like a very mild version of discovering that you're adopted.

Even if it were somehow legally possible to change one's birth certificate to recognise this error, I couldn't do that because it would mess up my mother's (always a scarily tidy woman) incredible family planning neatness , as she went on to produce my sister exactly three and a half years later on January 25th.