The horrible things that make this the worst week of the year

THIS is the week I hate most in the year. It’s even worse than the one that comes after Christmas and New Year.

The clocks have gone back and we’ve had to deal with Halloween.

The time change and spooky festivities cause various problems, not least trying to work out how to change the car dashboard clock, and how not to scare small children demanding treats with menaces.

The two dates are surely the most pointless in the calendar. One is designed by malignant forces to make the winter even worse than it already is by plunging us into early darkness, and the other undoes all the good work telling children that ghosts don’t exist, not to take gifts from strangers and not to eat too much sugar.

Apparently some farmers in the far north of Scotland benefit in the mornings from the clocks going back.

If it means we could have our night light back, I’m all for independence for all of us.

The darkness fails to get me into the spirit of Halloween. But, not wanting to appear more bah-humbug than I already am about a money-making festival, I had no option but to dust down my pointy hat, dig out the dusty plastic bowls shaped like pumpkins and fly on my broomstick to the nearest budget supermarket to stock up on jaw-breaking chews in nuclear hues.

I do have a resident black cat but, sadly, she won’t play ball in scaring small scroungers away. She either hides under the bed or tries to suck up to them.

My own small scroungers have morphed into larger scroungers and no longer care for free chocolates shaped like eyeballs dished out door to door.

Instead they retired to the nearest cavern that runs spooky happy hours or to the nearest football pitch, returning under cover of darkness to demand why all our supplies of seasonal junk have vanished down the throats of people we don’t know.

But then Halloween is just one night, while wintertime is for months.

Do the powers that be end British Summer Time just to make people feel miserable or is it a cynical marketing ploy to make us think about Christmas lights and rush to the shops?

Keeping summer time would align our clocks with other time zones around the world, which is good for business. It would also reduce accidents.

An experiment to keep British Summer Time from 1968-71 saw road casualties in England and Wales during the hours affected fall by 11% and by 17% in Scotland.

As we celebrate Halloween, bad things happen in the dark from accidents to crime and injury.

And it’s harder to stay healthy and happy in the gloom.

Children will now be leaving school in the afternoon with a scant hour to play outside before the sun goes down and parks are locked.

No more earlyevening strolls in the dusk, we’ll be holed up inside worrying about our fuel bills.

We are told people in the north of Scotland would not see daylight until 10am if we didn’t put the clocks back.

The final insult is that we’re tricked into believing we have the bonus of an “extra” hour in bed. When clocks go back an hour and summer time reverts to Greenwich Mean Time, it feels like 8am when it is 7am for a few days. This is little use if your body clock is confused. Rather than roll over and go back to sleep, my body clock is firmly in summer for at least a week as I toss and turn unable to sleep or wake.

Then, come nightfall, slumber won’t come when clocks say it should. It feels too early to go to sleep. The result is a kind of clock-changing jet lag rather than a fake extra hour under the duvet.

By the end of this week, sucking any chocolate eyeballs left over from Halloween will seem like a good idea for a quick energy buzz.

The nights won’t really get lighter now until March 25, 2018, when British Summer Time starts again.

May as well eat Halloween junk then. Some consolation is needed and it’s several weeks to Christmas.