Hibernation...?

For a quite some time I have been under the impression that I am entirely useless after 9pm. However, with the nights drawing in and the clocks rather unhelpfully going back, I may have to revise this theory. Unlike many of my fellow students, I rarely find myself working late into the night on the eve of a deadline. I would love to suggest this is because I am wonderfully organised and complete every essay early, but the reality is this; if I did attempt to complete the work by staying up late, the quality of writing produced would be comparative to my creative writing task of 14 years ago in which much of it was written in an invented language of Martian space-bears, and the plot was harshly criticised by my teacher. This has resulted in the tactic of setting an alarm for about 5 o'clock and giving myself a few hours to complete the job in the morning, which has no doubt meant better marks than my Year 1 story received.

Returning to my quandary, I fear I my 9pm estimation may have to be re-evaluated. Allowing 1 hour for the clocks changing, and another hour for the depths of winter into which we are plunging, and my daily shelf-life expires at about 7 in the evening. Considering this logically, I look to the animal kingdom for some sound advice!

Wikipedia helpfully informs me that various species of bats, birds, bears and squirrels all have a similar problem. Clearly disgruntled by the drop in light and temperature they aren't keen on winter, like myself. I imagine that having come to this conclusion, the bear, bat and other animal communities had a bit of a chat, and like the Spanish, organised a time in which sleep will be had, and life won’t suffer because of this. (The Spanish call this a siesta, when discussing animals we tend to use the word hibernation.)

So, people of this cold, dark, wintery world, I put to you this. If we move Christmas, New Years Day and the associated gluttony, presents and laziness, and shut down the worlds stock exchanges, economic hubs and political organisations, human hibernation could work. We could simply finish October, baton down the hatches, and emerge from our duvet-cocoons at the end of February, knowing that everybody else had done the same, we’d avoided a load of rubbish weather, and DFS would still have a sale on.

As I really can’t pick any holes in the idea, and know that my winter will be about as productive as an afternoon in a Virgin Media call centre, I don’t see why we can’t role out this plan regionally in the very near future.