Spring equinox

Today the daylight hours equal the night-time hours. All over the world. I find that mind-blowing when I think about it.

Here in Cyprus, it was fully light when I woke up just after six o'clock this morning, and as I type - quarter to six in the evening - dusk is falling. So I suppose 12 hours of daylight is exactly what we had here. We'll be putting the clocks forward at the weekend - as usual in Europe, at 1am on the last Sunday of March - so it'll stay light for longer in the evening, which is good. On the other hand, it won't be light so early in the morning, which isn't so pleasant.

I'm not entirely sure why putting clocks forward a couple of weeks early (as happened in the USA this year) is supposed to save fuel. Seems to me that we'll need an hour less of electric light in the evening, and an hour more in the morning. Same with central heating, on the cooler days. And since our main water heating is solar, and Tim and I both have showers in the morning, we'll have to start using the electric immersion as top-up heating again for at least a month or two as the sun won't have had long enough to warm it up. So the net effect is probably that we use more fuel, not less, when we put the clocks forward.

The weather today was muggy, with the sky rather grey. Not particularly hot - I don't suppose the temperature got much above 20C - but that's all to the good after a warmer-than-usual February. We don't want summer to start unusually early. The forecast is for more of the same, with possible rain in the next ten days or so, and night-time temperatures of around 10-12C. So, we'll keep the thick duvet on the bed for a while yet.