Weather wise

IT IS over a week since the clocks changed and I am still suffering from jet lag. If they made us all start work an hour earlier, we wouldn't stand for it, but changing the time seems to make it acceptable.

My clock lag, however, is nothing compared to some of the summer-time problems around the world. While Israel moved its clocks forwards on Thursday 19 March, the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza waited until Friday 3 April. For two weeks, extra care was needed in making appointments. While some bemoaned this fortnight of temporal confusion, others saw it in a positive light. Ahmed Abdel Rahman, the secretary general of the Palestinian Authority cabinet, said: "It is important for some Palestinians who got rid of the Israeli occupation to use every chance in order to show their political distinction from Israel."

In Ohio, the change to summer time brought out the police in riot gear as a rowdy crowd gathered in the university town of Athens to protest about bars closing at 2am. They were meant to close at 2.30, but since the clocks went forward from two to three, they lost half-an-hour's drinking time.

This parallels a long-standing dispute in many states about bar-opening times and clocks going back in winter. If a bar closes at 2am, why does it not stay open for another hour when the clock goes back to one? Officially, the answer is that bars start closing at 1.59 and are already shut by the time the clock changes. But try explaining that to a drunk at two in the morning.