No summer so switch to spring folks

Tomorrow at 2am times will change. In more ways than one.

Namely, two ways.

Firstly, the Department of Internal Affairs will achieve what Albert Einstein always believed was possible but was never able to physically prove it, and that is to speed time up.

Although grey skies and rain left the Bay dampened down and dreary yesterday, and the weather is marginal today, the switch to Daylight Saving is also commonly referred to as the switch to "summer" time.

To be more accurate, it should be tagged "sort of spring time".

The official first day of spring emerged last Saturday as the equinox took place ... at 2.49pm, to be exact.

So it is perhaps right and fitting that we be given more time to appreciate the sight of blossoms at the end of the day.

Daylight Saving isn't new - although it took a Member of Parliament, the Honourable Sir Thomas Sidey, about 20 years of raising the issue annually before it was finally decided in 1927 that clocks "shall be advanced" one hour between November 6, 1927, and March 4, 1928.

Before that, one of the arguments against it was that it would disadvantage people in rural areas, and women in particular.

One opponent of the bill declared - "Summer Time will bring no happiness to the women of New Zealand who live in the backblocks.

"The bill does not make the case for now requiring the wife of the working man to get up an hour earlier in order to get her husband away to his work."

In 1941, part of a response to wartime, the clocks went forward an hour, as usual, but they stayed forward.

So we've always been an hour out of kilter anyway.

Until 1974, when it was trialled again, and the public gave it the thumbs-up for a permanent return in 1975, when time went forward between the last Sunday in October and the first Sunday of March the following year.

In 1990 the time frame expanded by about six weeks, and in 2006 was boosted even more, to what it is today - the last Sunday in September to the first Sunday in April.

And so to the second part of the changing times equation.

As 2am pops up on the clock, and becomes 3am in a millisecond, those tuning in to watch the BBC World News on TV1 from the little old portable telly they've had in their room for the past 15 years will signal to them the changing times.

Namely, it will stop transmitting pictures and sounds.

Analogue signals will be replaced by digital ones.

It's an interesting coincidence of dates, but was never an intentional one, a Going Digital spokesman told me.

Although there could be a benefit ... you'll have an extra hour tomorrow to get a digital top-box if you get caught out.