It has been more than a week since my last podcast. Why? What is my excuse?
Well, my excuse is that last week was half term. And some of you are probably saying, "What does he mean — half term?" So I shall explain.
Schools and colleges and universities in England start each year in September, after the long summer holiday. In other words, September is the start of the "academic year". The schools then teach, and the children learn (or some of them learn!), until the middle of December, when the Christmas holiday starts. The time from when schools start in September to when they finish in December is a "term". There is then a second school term which starts in January and runs to the Easter holiday in March or April, and a third school term which starts after Easter and runs to early in July. In America, people use the word "sesmester" to describe the divisions of the academic year, but in Britain we always call them "terms".
So what is this "half term" which was my excuse for no podcast last week? Well, by the end of October the teachers and the school children are so exhaused that they need a little holiday. So the schools close for a week, and we call this the "half term holiday" or simply "half term". And last week was half term, so my house was full of children. They argued, they played computer games, they played loud music, they wanted to go shopping, they wanted to visit their friends and they wanted cakes for tea. So — no podcast.
Yesterday, we turned the clocks back. What does that mean? In Britain, as in most European countries, we change the time on our clocks twice during each year. We move the time forward by one hour on a Sunday at the end of March, so that we get more daylight in the evenings during the summer. And we move the time back by one hour on a Sunday at the end of October. We have had this system of "summer time" and "winter time" since the First World War, and you would think that everyone was used to it by now. But every year, there are people who forget — they arrive at the station one hour too early for their train, or one hour too late; or they go to church on Sunday at the wrong time. (Yes — I have done both of those things). This year something more spectacular happened. There was chaos at Gatwick airport in London. No-one had told the airport's computers that the clocks had changed.