This morning on BBC Radio 4's Today programme we had the twice-yearly ritual of someone ranting about the prospect of putting the clocks back (which will happen this weekend.)
Sir Alastair Horne was being entertainingly rude about the benefits this accrued to Scottish farmers and schoolchildren. Statistics, he claimed, showed that far from being run over in the dark mornings, Scots schoolchildren tended to have road accidents in the afternoon. So that's all right, then.
In any case, opined Sir Alastair, Scotland was welcome to adopt "tundra time" or whatever time zone it felt like, now that it was a devolved government, without having an adverse affect on the rest of us.
John Humphrys worried gently at this. Could there possibly be two different time zones in Britain at once?
I did laugh. At one point, the Palestinians, seeking to flex their independence and sovereignty, announced a separate time zone from Israel, so that there was the bizarre situation of it being 12 noon in west Jerusalem and 1pm across the road in east Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank. Appointments were impossible: you were always either too late or too early.
However, a quick check just now informs me that Paltime is currently the same as Israel. Even the joy of being bloodyminded to the Israelis appears to have dissipated when it comes to clock-watching.