Pause for thought on Wednesday.

As you toss the salad and grill the steak for supper stop for a fraction of a second and look at your digital watch.

At 8.02pm on February 20 this year it will be an historic moment in time.

It will not be marked by the chiming of any clocks or the ringing of bells, but at that precise time, on that specific date, something will happen which has not occurred for 1,001 years and will never happen again. As the clock ticks over from 8.01pm on Wednesday, February 20, time will, for sixty seconds only, read in perfect symmetry 2002, 2002, 2002, or to be more precise - 20:02, 20/02, 2002.

The last occasion that time read in such a symmetrical pattern was long before the days of the digital watch and the 24-hour clock - at 10.01am on January 10, 1001. And because the clock only goes up to 23.59, it is something that will never happen again.

Stand by, don't let the greens boil over, get excited but don't do anything silly...........



(Of course, in the USA it'll be 20:02, 02/20, 2002, which is a slightly different kind of symmetry....)