Spring forward, fall back Mnemonic relating to Daylight Saving
Time, indicating that clocks are moved forward an hour in spring
and back an hour in autumn. Autumn is the time of year for
English wrinklies like me to bemoan the creeping Americanization
of our culture, as we see Bonfire Night being steadily
superseded by Halloween. The 'penny for the guy' of our youth
has gone and been replaced by trick or treat and green-faced
ghouls at our doors demanding sweets. While finishing off the
left-over sweets and transporting myself back to Olde England
when reading Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel's excellent novel set in
Tudor England, I groaned again at her use of the American 'fall'
to mean autumn. It's always advisable to have a stack of
reference books nearby when reading the esteemed Hilary's work
and I checked the OED nestled inside my iPad. I need not have
grumbled; 'fall' is indeed a pukka Tudor word, deriving from the
phrase 'fall of the leaf', which is first found in print in
Toxophilus, 1545, an archery instru