The days may be getting longer – but there’s still nothing like an early night

We are, at heart, a nation that likes to be tucked up in bed by 10pm with a good book

So the clocks have gone forward and, as with so many things in life, I feel that I should be happier about it. As I watch everyone around me rejoice at the prospect of lighter, longer evenings, I am reminded of the one time I went to Glastonbury and spent the entire five days feeling miserable, trudging through mud and a bottle of Famous Grouse, wondering when it would all be over and I could stop pretending I had any interest in music not made by the Spice Girls or Take That. I tend to view Daylight Saving in the same way I do oysters: I know I am supposed to like it, but I don’t.

I used to believe that I was a summer person, because in my head summer people were: bright, breezy, a bit sexy, their hair tousled into a permanent beach wave, their skin sunkissed, their whole body sending out laid-back, carefree “vibes” that let everyone know that they had just had sex and smoked a post-coital doobie. Also, it is well known that winter is depressing because it never gets light, and all living things need light to… well, live.

But then I realised that, actually, you can get depressed at any time of the year, and that there is something even more excruciating about summer depression than winter depression, because at least in the winter you are expected to be depressed, whereas in the summer you are just supposed to be drinking rosé and eating ice cream, and honestly, how can you be depressed when the sun is out?

As if that’s how depression works.

Last summer, during that great, endless heatwave when

we all wondered if we would ever be cold again, I realised: no, I am not actually a summer person. I do not have tousled beach hair, and I don’t give off the impression that I’ve just had sex and smoked a post-coital doobie, because I haven’t.

I remember the moment this struck me with such force that I felt winded: I was walking down a London street, my thighs stuck together and sweat trickling down my back, and I realised that I really didn’t like it being the same temperature outside my body as inside.

But there is another strand to my despair at Daylight Saving, and that is the fact it no longer gets dark at 3pm. Man, I love it when it gets dark at 3pm – you know where you are (or you don’t, because it’s dark and you can’t see), and that if you wanted to, you could legitimately leave work and be in bed by 8pm without feeling any sort of guilt about it at all.

One of the greatest discoveries of sobriety, for me, has been that at night time, you get tired. I know, I know – it should be more profound than that. But it isn’t, not really.

The truth is, without that 6pm shot of sugar and alcohol, you start to wind down and feel sleepy, and going out becomes more of a chore, not just because everyone around you is p----- and you’re stone cold sober, wishing they’d stop repeating themselves. Circadian rhythms dictate that we should go to bed when it gets dark, and in the summer, that gets later and later until you are lying in bed at 10pm, desperate to sleep but tortured by the heat and the sunlight sneaking through the sides of the blackout blinds. If you go to bed before 11pm in the summer, you are considered some kind of joyless misanthrope, when in fact you’re just tired.

So I was overjoyed to read this week that English National Opera is to programme some of its performances to end before 10pm, so that audiences can get an early night and not miss the last train home. How very civilised. I applaud their thoughtfulness wholeheartedly: in my book, no cultural experience is better than an early night, but why should the two be mutually exclusive?

Oh yes, there are matinees, but matinees are not particularly compatible with full-time employment, and ENO is only acknowledging what Brexiteers have been saying for some time: us Brits are not European, not at all, and it would be nice if, in the absence of leaving the EU, we could at least leave behind the ridiculous notion that we are all continental, enjoying siestas and late-night culture.

We saw this when 24-hour drinking was introduced back in 2005 – a real boon to alcoholics like me, but not really taken up by anyone without a serious drinking problem.

We are, at heart, a nation that likes to be tucked up in bed by 10pm with a good book, and that is sexy in its own, snugly way. There is no point fighting against it. The days may be getting longer, but I will still be turning the lights out early.

Thank you and, most importantly of all, good night.