The Hour We Get Back
This Sunday, 25 October, at three o'clock in the morning, the clocks in Spain will quietly turn back to two. Most of us will sleep through it. And yet something rather extraordinary will have happened: for once in the year, time will give us something back.
We spend so much of our lives feeling that there is not enough of it. Not enough hours in the day, not enough evenings, not enough mornings that truly belong to us. And then, one night in late October, without asking anything in return, the year hands us a single, unexpected hour.
I have always loved this night. Not for the practical reasons, the lighter mornings or the extra sleep, but for what it represents. And this year, I found myself wondering where this curious ritual came from, and who else in the world shares it.
NOT EVERYWHERE
A ritual the world does not share
If you are reading this from Tokyo, Mumbai, Dubai, Nairobi or Buenos Aires, your clocks will not move at all this weekend. Changing the time twice a year is far less universal than we Europeans tend to imagine. Only around seventy countries still do it, roughly a third of the world.
Most of Asia, Africa and the Middle East have never adopted it. Near the equator, it would make little sense: the days are almost the same length all year round, so there is no summer light to save. In South America, Chile is now the only country on the continent that still changes its clocks. And the list keeps shrinking. Russia stopped in 2014, Brazil in 2019, Mexico in 2022.
There is something even more charming to remember. The southern hemisphere lives the opposite season. In Sydney and Auckland, the clocks went forward only a few weeks ago, to welcome spring. So while we gain an hour this weekend, they have already given theirs up in exchange for long, bright evenings. The same hour, travelling around the world.
WHERE IT BEGAN
Candles, coal and a morning ride
The story usually begins with Benjamin Franklin. In 1784, while living in Paris, he wrote a playful essay calculating how many candles Parisians could save if they simply got up earlier and used the morning sun. He never proposed moving the clocks; he was teasing the city for sleeping through its daylight. But the idea stayed.
More than a century later, an English builder named William Willett took it seriously. Riding his horse through London early one summer morning, he was struck by how many houses still had their curtains closed in full sunshine. In 1907 he published a pamphlet with a wonderful title, The Waste of Daylight, and spent the rest of his life campaigning for it. He died in 1915, without ever seeing his idea come true.
It came true a year later, and not for poetic reasons. On 30 April 1916, in the middle of the First World War, Germany became the first country to move its clocks forward, to save energy. Britain followed within weeks, and much of Europe after it. What began as a wartime measure became, over the decades, a seasonal habit. Since the 1990s, all of the European Union changes its clocks on the very same night.
And here is a detail I find fascinating as someone who lives in Barcelona. Spain has followed Central European Time since 1940, even though geographically we sit much closer to London's meridian than to Berlin's. It is one of the reasons why our sun rises so late in winter, and why our dinners are famously late too.
The debate is far from over. In 2019, the European Parliament voted to end the twice-yearly change, but the member states have never agreed on which time to keep for good. So for now, the hour still comes back to us every autumn. And as long as it does, I intend to enjoy it.
Luxury is not having more time. It is knowing what to do with the time you are given.
THE GIFT
An hour that belongs to no one
Think of how carefully we spend our hours. Each one is already promised to something: to work, to errands, to the people who need us, to the long list that never quite ends. Even our free time is often scheduled, measured, made useful.
The hour we get back is different. It was not in anyone's plans. No one has booked it, no meeting can claim it. It arrives unclaimed. And so the question it asks is a beautiful one: if you had one hour that truly belonged to you, with nothing expected of it, what would you do?
My answer, every year, is the same. As little as possible, and as slowly as I can.
HOW I SPEND IT
Six ways to spend the hour
A small proposal for this Sunday, and for every slow Sunday that follows:
A breakfast that takes its time
Not the coffee drunk standing up. The real one: a table laid properly, warm bread, fruit, a second cup. Let breakfast become an occasion, not a task.
A book, not a screen
Pick up the book waiting on your bedside table. Mine, at the moment, is the first volume of Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation: not light reading, but the kind that rewards a slow hour. Read a chapter by the window, in your softest cashmere, with nowhere to be.
A walk at the new dusk
From Sunday, evening arrives earlier. Go out to meet it. Autumn light in the late afternoon is the most flattering light of the whole year. Though I must confess, my forever preference will always be the morning light, and the good news is that from Sunday, it arrives a little earlier too.
The first candle of the season
Light it for no reason at all. There is something about that first flame of autumn that turns a home into a refuge.
A call you keep postponing
A friend, a mother, someone far away. An hour is long enough for a real conversation, the kind that has no hurry in it.
Nothing at all
And if all of this sounds like too much, do nothing. Dolce far niente, even in October. The hour will not be wasted. Rest is never wasted.
THE SEASON
Welcoming the darker days
I know that many people dread this moment. The evenings close in, the light leaves earlier, summer suddenly feels far away. But I have learned to see it differently.
The darker days are an invitation inwards. To candlelight and long dinners at home. To soups and red wine, to wool and books, to evenings that start early and end gently. Summer is a season for going out into the world. Autumn is a season for coming home to ourselves.
And perhaps that is what the extra hour is really for. Not to be filled, but to be noticed. A small, quiet threshold between the bright months and the soft ones, a gift that only some of us receive, and that none of us should waste in a hurry.
This Sunday, take the hour. It was always yours.
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