With the clocks turning back an hour, I came up with one of my usual Cunning Plans: to keep myself one hour ahead (so on Central European Time) for as long as I can.

Of course, it isn’t that easy.

The mobile phone, TV, laptop and desktop PC all automatically adjusted themselves. Every time I look at the wall clock, I mentally subtract an hour. That just leaves the alarm clock.

Now, I’m not the best at rising in the morning, and my nightmare is that the alarm comes on at what it thinks is 7.30am, but is actually 6.30am, and in my stupor I can’t get up fast enough to turn it off and that I end up ‘listening’ to Sarah Kennedy. It’s bad enough coping with the ten minutes before Wogan starts.

As it happens, with not having a life I am getting to bed at a reasonable – almost European – hour, so I could, if I really wanted to, get the bus into work at 8.30am instead of 9am. Except that the buses don’t run like that in the morning, so it’s actually 8.15am. But who can think about bus times that early in the morning?

So we shall see how it goes. At some point I will adapt to being an hour behind (as it were), and rousing myself will get harder… I do tend to hibernate over winter. But getting into work early means I can leave earlier, especially on Fridays. Carrot… stick…