It seems like I spend all year waiting for it – that magical day when there’s an extra hour for me to spend however I please.

It used to be easy. Sleep was always the first choice when it came to deciding what to do the day the clocks fell back for winter. I either didn’t set the alarm at all or took great joy in setting it for an hour later than usual.

But as I get older, sleep – though always welcome – is increasingly being replaced with other things. How about an hour for myself, just to snuggle up in my cosy IKEA chair by the window and read a book? Or maybe to bake those cookies I’ve been thinking of literally for weeks but never get around to making. Or even – and this is the most likely story of my life at the moment – spending that hour working so that I might have a better chance of getting through the day’s to-do list.

In the end, the cookies didn’t get made, the to-do list didn’t get done and I didn’t sleep any longer.

But I did end up spending that “free” hour more than once today because I couldn’t settle on just one thing…and they’re all things I don’t get to do on a regular basis.  Like enjoying a latte while doing the Saturday Star crossword, having a lie-down and reading a few chapters in the book I have going at the moment, and now, settling in to watch the Amazing Race and Desperate Housewives.

Makes me wish the clocks fell back more than just once a year!