“Spring forwards, fall backwards.”
Or in other words - as we move forward into the autumn months, time is set to go backwards by an hour at 3am this Sunday, April 2, when daylight saving time ends.
That means before bed this Saturday night, people across the country will be resetting the time on their clocks and watches (and probably leaving the one in the car because it’s just too complicated and anyway, it will be correct again in a few months) and looking forward to an hour’s lie-in on Sunday morning.
As you lie in bed, savouring that extra hour before you actually have to get up, do something or be somewhere, spare a thought for George Hudson, the Kiwi responsible for your extra hour of sleep time.
Back in 1895, as a keen amateur entomologist and daytime post office worker, George put great value in the hours of daylight after his shift ended, when he could find and collect a wide range of bugs. In 1895, he presented a paper to the Wellington Philosophical Society suggesting a two-hour daylight-saving shift in time to create lighter evenings for hobbyists such as himself to utilise. While his idea got some support, it wasn’t enough to initiate any official appetite for change, and George had to wait until 1927 for New Zealand to introduce daylight saving time (and he only got one hour, not the two he had proposed).