Take, for instance, the art of designing Halloween costumes for dogs..

Here’s my favourite of the bunch, Darth Vader dog:

But what makes this night unusual is that it’s the night that we have to turn all the clocks back an hour. Yep, at 2:00am it will be one o’clock again, and we’ll have to do this hour all over again.

A 25 hour Sunday! When I was a kid that would have been my idea of hell.. but mind you, back then there wasn’t that much to do on a Sunday – no shops were open, and a Sunday almost always meant rain and a repeat of Last of The Summer Wine. Shudder..

It’s said that we turn the clock back to help Scottish farmers do whatever they Scottish farmers do with a bit more light in the morning. It’s also claimed that it’s much safer for kid’s walking to school in the morning (do kids even walk to school anymore these days?) if the clocks go back.

But hang on – doesn’t more light for kids walking to school in the morning mean that there is less light for them when they come home? And isn’t it plausible that more kids might be run over when they’re tired at the end of their school day than at the beginning?

So, I’m a skeptic when it comes to us messing around with the clocks all the time – maybe we should just adopt the same time zone as France and mainland Europe?

I’m always impressed by the people who volunteer and collect money for good causes at this time of year, commemorating those who have been lost in conflicts around the world.

I do feel sorry for the humble poppy though – it’s a beautiful flower, but always now associated with wars. Maybe poppies need a PR consultant to give them a new image?

Here are eight facts about poppies:

1. Poppies first caught people’s attention during the Napoleonic Wars, as they bloomed over the graves of fallen soldiers.

2. In World War I, the poppy was noticed in large numbers again, popping up (is that why they’re called poppies?) in the rubble of France and Belgium as the soil became rich in lime. The small red flowers flourished around the graves of the dead, as they had a century before during the Napoleonic Wars.

3. The most famous bloom of poppies during World War I was to be found in the churned up soil of Ypres, a town in Flanders, Belgium. 1915 saw the second battle of Ypres, which was calamitous for the allies as it saw the first use of the new German chlorine gas, bringing forth poppies in large numbers.

4. Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae of the Canadian Forces Artillery was inspired by the poppies he saw at Ypres to write the famous poem “Flanders Fields”, describing how the flowers blew between the wooden crosses. McCrae was actually dissatisfied with the poem and threw it away. Fortunately a fellow officer saved it and sent it to newspapers in England where, after being rejected by London’s Spectator, it was finally published by Punch in December 1915.

5. Two days before the Armistice, an American woman called Moina Michael from Athens, Georgia, read McCrae’s poem, and was so moved that she wore an artificial red silk poppy all year round in memory of those who died in the war. Moina campaigned to have the poppy emblem adopted as a national memorial symbol in the United States.

6. On 29 September, 1920 the National American Legion agreed to make the Flanders Fields Memorial Poppy its national emblem of remembrance. A French woman , Madame E. Guérin, had met Moina Michael at Columbia University’s YMCA, where Moina was working as a volunteer, and was present at the National American Legion. Madame Guérin set about selling millions of poppies, made by French women.

7. In 1921 Madame Guérin introduced the Memorial Poppy to the UK, when she sent French women to London to sell poppies. In the autumn of 1921, at a meeting with Field-Marshall Earl Haig (the former Commander-in-Chief of the British Armies in France and Belgium) she convinced him to adopt the Flanders Poppy for the British Legion. The British Legion’s Poppy Day Appeal was born, raising money for poor and disabled veterans.

8. The wearing of white poppies is, perhaps surprisingly, not a new phenomenon. The idea dates back to 1933, when the UK Women’s Guild designed them to represent peace. In both 1933 and 1988 the British Legion was invited to produce white poppies, but they declined (and refused to accept proceeds) as they felt they were disrespectful to soldiers.

If you’re interested in learning more about her story, read this webpage about Moina Michael and how the poppies of Flanders Field became the flower of remembrance.

In Britain it’s always the fourth Sunday in Lent (which will make it Sunday March 22nd this year). In the USA it will be the second Sunday in May (which will be May 10th in 2009).

Well, it seems even the professionals can get confused. For instance, this morning I stumbled across the website of iflorist.co.uk:

They sound pretty confident don’t they? But err guys.. March 20th isn’t a Sunday – it’s a Friday!

Seems to me like someone hasn’t been properly updating their website – they changed the year, but not the date! Or could this be an attempt by the florist to encourage earlier flower-buying to boost the economy and wake the world up from the credit crunch?

No wonder people find the date of Mother’s Day hard to work out. And don’t even get me started on when they’re celebrating Mother’s Day in Argentina, Norway and Greece..

PS. Don’t forget, if you’re looking for a unique and beautiful gift for your mother this Mother’s Day that we are having a 20% off sale in the Fabiola & Sing Sing online store until March 22nd. Which is a Sunday. :-)

Which is pretty important if you want to get a good present for your mother, and to tell her you love her. After all, she’s the one who picked you up when you grazed your knee, gave you a cuddle when you had nightmares, and made you fishfinger sandwiches whenever you were ill.

Life is complicated by the fact that the date for celebrating Mums is not just different every year, but held on different dates around the globe.

So.. take Norway and Greece, for instance. They’ve already had their Mother’s Day this year. Sorry Greek mums and Norwegian mothers – that’s it. Nothing else to look forward to now until February 2010.

And you can stop holding your breath if you’re an Argentinian mum. You won’t be having your special day celebrated until the third Sunday of October.

But looking at the stats of most of the visitors to Fabiola & Sing Sing’s blog it looks like most of you are based in the United Kingdom and USA.

Us Brits celebrate Mother’s Day (or as it’s known in old Blighty, Mothering Sunday) on the fourth Sunday in Lent. If you have a book of logarithms to hand then you’ll be able to work out that that means that this year, Mother’s Day will be on March 22 2009. Which means you have a month to find the perfect Mother’s Day gift.

And if you’re American, you’ll be giving thanks for years of Mom’s home-baked apple pie on the second Sunday of May – May 10 2009.

Phew. This is all very confusing. Couldn’t someone in a position of authority like Barack Obama, Bill Gates or Bono get this sorted out and standardised?

Well, that’s all changed overnight and we’re now well and truly covered with the stuff – it looks gorgeous.

While I’m defrosting the car, there’s just time to share with you five things you may never have known (and, most likely, never worried that you didn’t know) about snow.

1. It is an urban legend that Eskimos have more than 100 words for “snow”. But if you’re interested, here is an amusing fake list of 100 Eskimo words for that gravity-challenged cold white stuff.

2. The top speed of an average snowflake is 1.7 metres per second. That’s 5 foot 7 inches in real money. Or, if you prefer, 1.06 Tom Cruises.

3. Enough snow fell in the UK on Monday for everybody to make 251,800 snowballs… each. That’s the calculation of maths wizard Carol Vorderman, who reckons that Britain saw a mind-boggling 3,840 billion kilograms of snow on 2 February.

4. The Guinness Book of World Records says that the world’s largest snowflake was measured at 38cm wide and 20cm thick. It was in the USA (of course) that this monster snowflake was witnessed, with some observers in Montana in 1887 describing it as “larger than a milk pan”.

5. Chionophobia is a fear of snow. Other lesser known phobias include Epistaxiophobia (fear of nose bleeds), Metrophobia (fear of poetry) and Sesquipedalophobia (fear of long words.. which must be upsetting when you hear the diagnosis from the doctor).