What to do in the dark - watch cricket, write novels.

Well, despite my moanin, grumbling and generally half-hearted campaigning, the clocks went back today.

It's pretty grim. Pitch black by half four in the afternoon, and it's only going to get darker between now and Christmas. How silly is that?

But on the bright side - there's weird and wonderful multi-coloured cricket on the telly! the Stanford 20/20 competition has kicked off and I've decided to throw myself into it as much as I can. I much prefer Test matches, but I'm no Luddite. Progress, progress, progress - that's me. Sometimes.

Meanwhile, Jimmy Coates: Blackout is tumbling off my pen. The last quarter is always the easiest bit to write - you've set everything up, now's the time to let the consequences unspool, the juicy twists to kick in and the most inventive action sequences that I've been picturing for months to finally click into place. It's fun, basically. So I'm getting on with it.

And now that the days are so dark for so long, there's even more writing time.