For weeks it has been getting lighter in the morning, lighter in the evening. It happens almost without you realising.
After a while, more people become wise to it. The birds chirp earlier. The sun comes through the window before you’re fully awake.
But tomorrow, we change the time. There is a perennial debate about whether daylight saving time – where the clocks go forward one hour and it stays lighter in the evening – is welcome.
I, for one, will never say no.
I am one of those annoying early risers, and at this time of year in Sydney, the sky is beginning to turn pink at 5.30am and day has arrived. Daylight saving time, then the onset of summer, means extra daylight at both ends of the day. As someone who walks religiously morning and evening, I’ll take it.
But what I love most about daylight saving is when I leave work at the end of the day, and it’s still light. The sun doesn’t glow red hot and set on your evening commute. The stars aren’t already in the sky when you arrive home.
I have strong memories of evenings spent lapping up that extra sun.
As a kid, I would shoot netball hoops and practice passes against the brick wall in our back yard until 8pm, or we’d take the dogs for a walk after dinner. It felt like cheating on the school-home-dinner-bed routine.
Now, the extra daylight means walking along the coast or swimming after work. Even though I go to bed early, it still feels a bit like hoodwinking time when nightfall comes late.
The best memory I have is from my time in Paris, where the sun sets on the Seine at 7pm in October. On board the Bateaux Mouche, watching dance groups practising on the banks, it was hard to imagine such a city enveloped in darkness and frigid winter temperatures of an evening.
I do have a soft spot for the cold, crispness of winter. There’s nothing quite like winter sun and I love to be cosy at night, flannelette sheets, hot-water bottles and all.
But the sweet spot is now – spring. These past few weeks leading up to the formidable clock change are some of my favourite. It is when the air begins to feel different. Diners eat at tables on the street, and you can have fish and chips on the sand without freezing.
I don’t love the ferocity of an Australian summer. Mornings can be thick with humidity and waking up to twentysomething temperatures feels like a race against the heat. Five years on from Australia’s black summer bushfires, for many the season is also laced with a fear of waking up to the smell of smoke.
Some countries do not abide by the clock changing rules. The same is true for several Australian states. Our bodies, and particularly those of our pets and children, are asked to adjust to this strange imposition of the hours in the day changing. Our stomachs become momentarily confused. We all spend at least a week saying “it’s 10am, but it feels like 11am” to make up for it.
But, just as we love to talk about the weather, every year, we all like to debate the pros and cons of daylight saving. Unlike the weather, we always know when it’s coming and yet it’s always a surprise when it does. But the birds, the bees, and the sun are always there – I’ll take having more time to enjoy them any day.
