Time Flies

This afternoon, sitting on the top deck of the number 57 bus, and gawping at the view, I realised that I was inadvertently tuning into the conversation of someone sitting a few rows behind me.

You know the type. They are typically not very interesting, but talk in a loud voice about things that they presumably think make them sound profound, interesting, clever, and possibly even attractive. This boy's conversation did none of the above for him. Shame.

He was saying to the poor suckers he was talking at, "it's, like, totally amazing, ain't it? Like, two years ago we were leaving school and stuff and now everyone's, like 18 and that, and everyone's getting, like, drunk all the time, and it's wicked and it's, like, amazing that it's two whole years already, ain't it?" This theme went on for about twenty minutes without pausing long enough for his audience to comment on whether it was, like, amazing or not. And all that time I wanted to walk to the back of the bus and shake him.

I didn't want to shake him because he was irritating (although he was) but because he had no idea that two years in is nothing to how, like, amazing it gets.

Two measly years! Two years during which time most of them will have been in some form of higher education anyway, to numb the effect of entering the real world. Pah!

It's almost fifteen years since I left school. Now that IS amazing. Amazing to me, anyway, since it really seems like it could have been just a couple of (admittedly busy) years ago. I can remember elements of my school with such very vivid clarity that it's a surprise to me each time I remember that I've been out of school for longer than I was at school now.

I met up recently with a girl I was at school with between the ages of 13 and 18, who I haven't seen for at least three years, and we were still making the same jokes as we were when we were 17. In many ways, it was like not time had passed.

But time has passed. Things have moved on. If Matey-boy on the bus is alarmed at how things change between the ages of 16 and 18, he's going to get quite light headed with what happens between the ages of 30 and 33. In those intervening years between us, we have celebrated three wedding anniversaries, had two children, rented two flats, sold one house and bought two new ones, held four jobs, been on countless first dates, had one grim medical diagnosis, and reduced our working weeks to an average of 3.5 days. And those are just the main headlines. Heavens knows what happened that we failed to mention to one another.

Seeing people like this has a profound effect on me. I come away feeling positive about the good news, sad about the bad news, warm and fuzzy and the friendliness of it all, and mildly depressed at the list of news I didn't have; the husbands and children that I can't talk about.

So THAT is why I wanted to shake this dumb-ass 18 year old. I wanted to grab him by the shoulders and tell him to stop banging on about how amazing it is that stuff is happening to other people, and to get on with doing some stuff himself. I wanted to smack his loud-mouthed chops and tell him to stop being wowed by the fact that his newly-of-age friends are able to get drunk and take note of the fact that RIGHT NOW they are meeting people who they might or might not marry, and might or might not have children with, but who will, without question, be significant in their respective life stories. I wanted to tell him to take decisions seriously, because you don't get the chance to make a lot of them a second time. I wanted to tell him that he should never regret doing something, he should only regret not doing it, and that no-one ever had a better life by saying no to new things. I wanted to tell him to look at how he feels now about the last two years and multiply that by twenty and think how he'll feel about this time when he's cruising towards his retirement.

But most of all, I wanted to tell him that hearing his too-loud conversation had made me realise that I should do all of these things myself, and see if, in three years time, when I run into an old friend, I feel more like my achievements make me proud.

As Ferris Buellar says, life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

Discombobulation and the Art of Distraction

I've had this blank post open now for about three hours.

I've written a bit of this and a bit of that and I've deleted it and started again and then deleted that.

I don't know if I've got nothing to say or too much to say. I don't know whether I am entirely lacking inspiration or simply oozing it. Has too much become nothing at all? Or is nothing at all taking over everything else?

Is it the time of year? Is it that a new year presents so many opportunities to do something new that it's hard to see the wood for the trees? I'm not much of a one for a new year's resolution, preferring to aim for something unquantifiable ("I'll say 'yes' more often" or "I'll have more fun") but I wonder if a more definite resolution actually brings focus before there's time to lose it.

Maybe it's the temperature. Maybe my thinks are froze. I am not a fan of cold, and boy is there a lot of it about at the moment. I don't like my first and last thought being whether I've got enough layers on, or wondering whether it's too Granny-like to be curled up on the sofa in my jimmers, fleecy bedsocks and moth-eaten cardigan, under a blanket (admit it ... that's the sexiest mental image anyone's conjured for your today).

Maybe it's just that there has been so much that has been regimented, controlled and prescribed for such a long time. Now I'm freer, and my time is my own. Other than the small matter of work, I don't have to be anywhere for two months. It's a bit daunting to go from extreme organisation to extreme liberation. Too much freedom isn't good for a girl. Not for this one anyway. I function better when plans are in place, or I risk languishing on the sofa under a blanket (phwor!) waiting for something to happen.

Or maybe it's none of these things. Maybe it's not that there's too much, but that there's too little. Maybe it's that I've got a nice house now, but that life is still the same, just under a different roof. Maybe it's that, for all I've started a new job which is calmer than the old one, I'm still really doing the same thing, and it's still not really that interesting. Maybe it's that it's a new year and it's still the same and I don't know how to put that down on the page anymore.

Maybe it's just that I'm tired and crabby and feeling the same January Blues that everyone else is feeling. But one way or another I can't seem to get my thoughts in order, and I'm in a proper blue funk.

I promise to try and snap out of it by tomorrow, when normal, eloquent, erudite, and deeply fabulous (humour me ... I'm feeling precious) service will be resumed.

Have you got the time?

time /taIm/ noun - the indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present and future, regarded as a whole.

When I was a student, we went on a field trip. Imagine it. Thirty or so like-minded, bright, optimistic young things being shuttled away on a day trip. When you're studying property at Reading University, trust me, a day out is a fine and glorious thing. I imagine that we all hopped out of bed that morning with the giddy excitement of a child on Christmas morning, put on the uniform appropriate to our social set (jeans, trainers, and a holey jumper for some, chinos, deck shoes, and Ralph Loren with the collar flipped up for others) and skipped onto campus to pile onto a coach and hit the M4. In my mind, the sun was shining and there was Cliff Richard style singing in the aisle.

Oh yes. You can't beat it. The open road. The route set for an educational, but light hearted day out to see a case study in the flesh. That's right folks. We were going to a new housing estate in Essex.

Oh dear.

I don't recall much about the housing estate in question. I don't even remember what it was called now, or why it was a relevant that we were shipped there to loaf around carry out important research all day. I don't believe that, as housing estates go, it was in any way exceptional (which makes a girl wonder why we were driven through four counties to this particular specimen).

What I do remember is that, in the middle of said estate, there was a green, and around the edge of the green there were nine huge boulders. Each one had a smooth side, and in large, foot high letters, a word was etched into the face. Standing in the middle of the green, and reading around, they said "take time while time is, for time will away".

Something about the phrase resonated with me. I googled (is "google" a verb?) it today. It's an old Russian proverb. Quite a nice sentiment, don't you think?

And never has it been more pertinent than recently. Time is in short supply!

My office days are flat out at the moment. I don't know if you've heard, but there's this recession thing going around, and it makes my work doubly hard and half as financially rewarding. I'm not complaining. I've got a job, which is more than a lot of people can say, so please consider me grateful to be over worked and under paid (well, perhaps not grateful exactly, but you know what I mean). But it doesn't half take a lot of time.

And there's this new house. It's great! My own little set of walls, and I love them! But MY WORD! they take a lot of loving! As we all know, just the cleaning, cooking, washing, ironing is enough to keep a girl busy, without the sanding, wallpaper stripping, hole filling, hole drilling stuff too. Time, time, time!

Then there is Loulou Workshop. It's my passion. I would give my arm to spend more time on it, but the time it takes is already significant. I always have a hundred more ideas for pieces, than I have time to make and I really want to have the time to be a bit more creative. I'm bursting with inspiration at the the moment, but you know what inspiration takes? That's right. Time.

And now there is a new project. With a group of friends from the Open House event, we are planning a BIG local contemporary art project. I think that I'm too much of a craftsman, and not enough of an artist to be an exhibitor, but there's talk of management committees and workshops and educational projects. It'll be a long term commitment. Yesterday, at the latest meeting about it all, I heard myself saying "I'm happy to dedicate time to this," and wondered as I said it where I thought this time would come from.

This weekend was the first one in four months in which I had nothing in my diary. I didn't have to be anywhere with anyone doing anything, with the exception of the quick art project meeting yesterday. Three days to myself. Heaven!

So, I went to the supermarket, viewed a shop for the art project, had friends for lunch, viewed another shop, had an impromptu brainstorm about the project, went into the West End for a leaving do, had the planned art project meeting, went back to the supermarket for all the things I'd forgotten, bought and hung curtains in the spare room, baked cakes, went to a friend's house on a tea-and-sympathy basis, dropped some books to another friend, went on a fruitless boot shopping mission (more about this another time I think), cleaned the house, did three loads of laundry and spoke to my mother.

Isn't it nice to have a bit of spare time?