Early morning surprise

Mary's phone started going off at what my clock said was 7:30 am this morning, which was a bit of a surprise. Turns out, it was not 7:30 but 8:30, a fact which had stolen upon me unawares because it hadn't been covered in last week's Economist or in either of the books I had been reading yesterday (nor, indeed, in any of the soccer highlights I watched before bed or any of the Tiktok-esque [I assume] videos of trampolines, wingsuit flights, skateboard jumps, trickshots or dancers that YouTube has sucked me into watching before bed).

The culprit, of course, is daylight savings time, which has arrived. If I recall correctly, it will soon be permanent, if it is not already so, a fact about which I have pretty mixed feelings. In the morning, no doubt, it will suck. It will make for a longer period of waking up in the dark to start my day, to do my morning meditation, stretching and readings, all of which seems to go nicely with a rising sun. In the evening, it may well exacerbate one of the long-running tensions in our marriage, Mary's preference for a later dinner and a later bedtime, all of which gets nudged by the fact that she is out photographing every day around dusk now, so she comes home after sundown.

Then again, maybe it will make it easier to do my own exercise later in the day without leaving my desk at 4 or 4:30, which is to say it will better align our late day habits and make me snack less in the early evening. We shall see. It would be surprised, in any case, if it proves fatal.