Clock changing, Punts and Picnics

I have just wasted an hour of my life putting all my clocks forward by one hour because of some spurious governmental edict of yesteryear (called 'Daylight Saving Time' DST).

For those of you who don't live in the UK; basically, in the autumn we put our clocks back one hour, and in summer we put them forward one hour. Apparently, it maximises the amount daylight hours that we get, but my personal opinion is that it's an hour spent faffing around with clocks that we won't get back.

DST was apparently implemented during World War I in order to conserve coal.

But is it me? I haven't clapped eyes on a single lump of coal for bloody decades, so why on earth are we still doing this ludicrous changing of the clocks to preserve the stuff? Utter madness. It should be abolished immediately.

Anyway, I digress. The last few days, the UK has been blessed with an unseasonably clement March. Temperatures have been hovering around 20 C (68 F) which is a bleeding miracle given that the average temperature for this time of year is normally 7 C (44 F).

There was only one thing for it. Izzy and I were going to have an outdoorsy day. Huzzar!

I asked Izzy what she wanted to do outside, and she immediately said: "please can we have a picnic?"

Excellent. Decision made. I am not normally a fan of al fresco dining because I don't like my food to be close to potential insects, but hey, a picnic was the choice du jour, so we were running with it.

Pic.No.1 We decided that we were going to have our picnic in a nature reserve near to Wolfson College (part of Oxford University). Izzy also decided that she wanted to take three stuffed toys called 'Sheep', 'Jingly' and 'Teddy' (yep, their names are pretty literal)

Pic.No.2 To get to Wolfson College we had to park in Old Marston village and walk through fields until we reached the nature reserve, which was adjacent to the River Thames (how come I ended up carrying all Izzy's stuffed toys as well as the rucksack?)

Pic.No.3 What a marvellous spot for a picnic! On the banks of the River Thames. You can tell that it was unseasonably warm because none of the trees have got leaves yet

Pic.No.4 Naughty George immediately bagged himself a top position for duck spotting. And then spent the whole time amusing himself by refusing to let them get out of the river. Git

Pic.No.5 This is our picnic. Actually, to be fair, it was more of a shitnic. For some reason I had accidentally bought too much meaty stuff: ham sandwiches, chicken chunks, party sausages, sausage rolls and scotch eggs. And everything tasted like scotch eggs, no matter what it was. Izzy loved it though because we were eating it outside. Kids are weird like that

Pic.No.6 As we stuffed the food down our necks as quickly as possible, we watched the traditional Oxford punts (boats powered by a big stick) sail past. I kid you not - the method of powering the punt by standing towards the stern is called 'Pricking the Punt'. I guffawed my head off at that

Pic.No.7 Izzy did some experiments to see what ducks will eat. They seemed to like party sausages quite a lot

Pic.No.8 Each duck must have eaten (at least) a whole party sausage. It made me wonder if they were like goldfish in terms of the fact that they will eat until they die as long as the food keeps on coming - not that I want to test the theory. I am an animal lover (but not in the carnal sense mind)

Pic.No.9 After our picnic, Izzy and I spent ages playing 'frisbee' and 'sticky hand ball'. Just after this photograph was taken, Izzy threw the frisbee and it hit me square in the Solar Plexus. I dropped like a sack of spuds, gasping for air. It wasn't a good look

That's about it for our picnic, and I have to say that I am loving the fact that days can be spent outdoors.

So dahlink, has it been sunny where you are? And have you got up to any shenanigans? Pray do tell!