Barrtalk: Give us back our hour of daylight please

There are few things more depressing than getting up in the morning, looking out the window on a work-day and discovering that Inishowen has turned fifty shades of grey.

Not the film [say nothing], but the sky outside, which seems to have settled into its winter uniform of rain, gloom and general misery.

And now, just to make matters worse, the clocks have gone back.

We're two days into the new time regime of more darkness, and I’m already regretting it. Is it too late to turn the clocks back [again]?

I certainly have no objection to a bit of extra time in bed on a Sunday morning. In a world where everything seems to cost more money, an extra 60 minutes of sleep is a rare free treat, as is a 49-hour weekend.

There are few things I enjoy more than discovering I have another hour to snooze when I thought it was time to get up. Especially when it is blowing a gale outside.

But here's the catch. We gain one hour at the end of October, only to spend the next six months watching precious daylight slip away as the days get shorter and the evenings close in.

It's a bit like being handed a fiver and then discovering that somebody has the code to your banking app and will quietly siphon your bank account over the next 20-odd weeks.

At this time of year, when darkness is already arriving earlier every evening, it strikes me as absolute madness. We get our extra hour in bed, but what good is that when we are sacrificing so much daylight over the months ahead?

By the time you finish work, get home to Moville, and think about heading out for a walk over the shore, the sun has already knocked off for the day.

Honestly, giving up an hour of evening daylight in late October seems like an act of hara-kiri. Who thought this was a good idea?

Apparently the whole business goes back to 1916, when Britain and Ireland introduced summer time during the First World War, following Germany's lead in an effort to conserve fuel and make better use of daylight. Those damn efficient Germans.

More than a century later, we're still at it, winding the clocks backwards and forwards twice a year as if we're all extras in some low-budget time-travel film.

There has been talk of ending the seasonal clock changes across Europe for years now, and Barrtalk abides.

The European Parliament voted in favour of doing so in 2019, but the proposal has never been fully implemented. These things seem to take forever.

So, if you enjoyed that extra hour on Sunday, good for you. Savour the memory, because we're now heading into the longest, darkest stretch of the year. It’ll be the end of March 2027 before we see sunlight past 6.30 in the evening. Yikes.

Thank god we have Christmas to look forward to between now and then. Just 59 days to go. Some people on Facebook [where else?] have their Christmas decorations up already, Her Indoors informs me!

The days, weeks, months, and years just keep rolling on regardless . . .

Moville was doing cheese buns long before Copenhagen

I've been raised on buns or toast with butter and cheese here in Moville, and I'm still partial to one.

I've eaten them for years without feeling the need to give the combination a fancy name, open an Instagram account or commission a mathematician to work out which version tastes best.

So imagine my confusion when I discovered I've apparently been enjoying a fashionable food trend all along, without even knowing it.

According to a recent article in The New York Times, Copenhagen is going crackers over something called a Bolle Med Ost, or BMO for short. Translated from Danish, that means a bun with cheese.

Yes, folks. Bread, butter and a slice of cheese. That's it. No secret ingredient or exotic garnish. Just a bun, some butter and cheese. And somehow, this has become the hottest food trend in the Danish capital.

We've been perfectly happy eating buns with butter and cheese for generations without giving them a Scandinavian identity.

Had I known they could become a culinary sensation, I might have opened a specialist bakery on Moville’s Main Street years ago, selling artisanal BMOs at a premium.

The NY Times journalist Amelia Nierenberg describes how Copenhagen's top bakeries now compete to perfect their BMOs, experimenting with different breads, butters and cheeses. One bakery chain reportedly sells 50,000 a month, while a shortage of a popular Danish cheese has even been blamed on the craze.

A Danish newspaper has ranked the city's 50 best BMOs, with one critic eating about 65 while researching the list and spending more than €250! Madness.

Apparently, proper Copenhageners eat their BMO open-faced rather than folding it over like a sandwich. The New York journalist discovered this after committing the culinary crime of eating hers with both hands.

Seriously, how does something as ordinary as a bun with butter and cheese suddenly become a food fad?

Maybe the secret is in the branding. Give something an exotic name, get a few influencers involved and suddenly people are queuing to pay seven dollars for a bun.

So here's my message to Copenhagen: welcome to the club. Barrtalk has been doing bread, butter and cheese perfectly well without all the fuss. I just didn't think to trademark it. D’oh [or should that be Dough?]!