Is that the time? This is a good time of year to think about … time. How it slips away from us. How annoying it is.
Here’s how it works: if you can’t wait for something to happen, time passes slowly. If you’ve a deadline and want time to stretch, it whizzes by.
You all know that a watched kettle never boils. It’s like something out of The Matrix. How wonderful it would be if we could freeze or slow down time like yon boy in the movie.
Frozen in time
If you were losing an argument, you could just freeze the moment to give you time to think of a witty riposte.
It wouldn’t work if everybody could do it, though, because the world would be permanently frozen in time, and no one could get a word in edgeways or any other ways.
As is well known, time speeds up as you get older. Why, it only seems like a year since it was January 1 2021.
When we were bairns, the school summer holidays seemed like a wonderful eternity, a heaven of endless play. When you get older, one day you’re out in the garden talking to the daffodils, the next you’re opening Christmas presents.
Another odd thing is that, for most of your puff, right through middle age, you don’t really seem to get old. Then, one day you find you’re 60-something, and you think: ‘How the hell did that happen? Where did the time go?’
Spring forward
It doesn’t help when they put the clocks forward: there’s another hour away. If you think about it, a cruel dictatorship could muck about with time all the time: four hours forward today, 10 hours backwards next week. It would play havoc with the economy and your civil liberties but, as I understand it, dictatorships have that sort of thing pretty low on their list of priorities.
Here’s another odd thing about time: when, at last, you have a free day and time to do lots of things you’ve been putting off, you hardly finish writing your to-do list before it’s time to go to bed. The time just disappears and you get less done than if you’d efficiently utilised a spare half hour on a busy day.
I think it’s because you think: ‘I’ve plenty of time. I’ll just read all the papers first. Then do the crossword. Might have a little nap. Where’s my kazoo? Must have a go at Beethoven’s Fifth again.’ Next thing, the day’s away.
Be right on time
Even if you’ve nothing to do, you should do it punctually. I’m not hardline about punctuality but think you should make the effort and not become habitually unpunctual. It’s disrespectful, ken?
Mind you, sometimes you wonder why you bother. Twice I’ve arrived very early for appointments and twice ended up late for them: once at an airport where I stood in the wrong queue, and once at a hospital where, having forgotten my letter, I didn’t know which department I was meant to be in and got horribly lost.
Even the BBC isn’t punctual nowadays. All its programmes run late. It’s a symptom of civilisation in decline.
Don’t become like them, folks. Keep up your standards in 2022. And have a good time.
