Ways to make the most of the 43 minutes of daylight you're getting today

DO you wake up to clear blue winter skies only to find the sun’s gone by the time you’re dressed? Here’s how to make the most of your tiny slice of daylight.

Get out of bed

Special as it can be to watch the sun rise and set in six minutes from under the duvet, it means you’ll be doing everything else in the dark for the rest of the day. If you get up while it’s light you’ll feel you’ve achieved something, even if it’s just putting on underwear.

Gaze out of the window

Spend a few of those precious daylight moments looking out of the window. It might be the only time you’ll see the outdoors bathed in natural light all week so, as well as admiring the pretty clouds, take a moment to check the car hasn’t been nicked.

Look in the mirror

If you haven’t seen your face in natural light for several days, be brave and have a good look in the mirror. It will be a miserable experience compared to the soft glow of your smile in a low wattage light bulb, but it’ll prompt you to get your roots done before Christmas.

Go outside

If you find a moment when it isn’t pissing with rain, step outside. It’s important to let some vitamin D penetrate your dry, pasty skin and make sure the few muscles left in your wasted, sedentary body still vaguely work.

Get back into bed

By the time you’ve achieved anything, your tiny window of winter daylight will have closed and it will be pitch dark again. Like a bird with a blanket over its cage you will immediately return to sleep.

Passive-aggressive email that took three hours to write gets cheerful two-word reply

A METICULOUSLY crafted and devastatingly detailed passive-aggressive office email has received a short, cheerful response.

Francesca Johnson spent 175 minutes drafting the message about the marketing team’s failure to RSVP for the office party, and believed it to be a true masterpiece of the genre.

She said: “It had everything. Ostensibly polite, but with a vicious, bubbling undercurrent of very palpable rage.

“I was certain that by the end of my polemic that bitch Lucy would be left a trembling mess and that she’d take a few days to reflect on my request to be sensitive to others’ deadlines.

“Instead, within 45 seconds, she replied ‘my bad!’

“Two minutes later, when I’d expected the subtle barbs of the penultimate paragraph would still be reverberating around her head, she added ‘yes sorry we’re all coming (not gerald)’ which only made things worse.”

Lucy Parry, the recipient of the email, said: “Yeah it was 1,000 words of bollocks by someone without a proper job to do. Next.”