abstract: For a circle rotation by an irrational angle $\alpha$ and a BV function $\varphi$, we study the variance of the ergodic sums $Sn=\sum{k=0}{n-1}\varphi (x+k\alpha)$. In particular, if $\alpha$ is not of constant type, one can construct sub-sequences $(ni)$ s.t. $Sni$ satisfies an almost sure invariance principle. An application to the rectangular periodic billiard in the plane is discussed.