Time is Short?

When a child at school, particularly post WWII boarding prep school, Ladycross, time appeared to move so slowly though the hated PE lessons were an exception as those  always appeared to come round far too quickly.

There is an interesting article in today's Times newspaper written by a journalist Giles Coran whose children I believe have just returned to school  for the new 2021/2022 academic year. Each year provides them with new possibilities, friends and possible adventures until they are in their twenties when careers, housing, families, debts and other aspects of life begin to catch up.

Clearly there are exceptions to the points  made in The Times, for example children whose parents are impoverished or die very prematurely or who have only one parent at home or hardly have homes at all but for many others  as Mr Coran states:

"But I am finding it very hard this week not to envy my children, and all children, the start of the new term and new academic year. It just doesn't seem fair that they get to begin all over again, to reinvent themselves every year, and we grown-ups who could really do with a change, do not."

One of the other characteristics of youth is the fearlessness that of course tends to wane with age. Thus when leaving Beaumont College, travelling by train from London to Istanbul Turkey as a teenager and from Cairo to Luxor Luxor were fearless adventures, which I doubt could be repeated today. 

Perhaps such  travels could not be safely repeated in C21, given local wars, including the protracted Afghanistan conflict now just ending,  resulting in  barriers being erected in many countries to inhibit refugees crossing their borders. 

Still there was the Vietnam war together with the Egyptian and Israeli conflicts in the Middle-East even at that time (c.1970). I also recall then being compulsorily  vaccinated with an anti Small-pox vaccine before being shipped out of Turkey from Izmir, to Cyprus. Yet the adventures were real and fulfilling.

Pre-Covid-19, travel became  far more widespread from about 1980 onwards and tended to be far safer, yet still exciting; see for example Pre-Covid-19 Travel. 

However now in 2021  travel has become much more difficult with many fewer airlines flying and of course great concern about CO2 emissions especially from older aircraft. 

Interestingly mrs maytrees, maytrees max and myself booked flying from London City to Dublin airport, early in October, for the wedding of an Irish niece. The fares are not too expensive but the complications of accessing the departure lounge post Covid-19 are more than irritating. The risk of not being allowed to travel because of some failure or other in Covid-19 checks is significant. Indeed there is a story again in The Times about a passenger who made it through to the departure lounge only to be prevented from taking his flight because of a sudden alteration in the Covid-19 rules made in the destination country.

Returning to the  main subject of this blog-post; there is no doubt that the older one becomes, the faster time appears to go. The gap between rising in the morning and retiring in the evening needs to be filled with as much as possible, whether writing a novel or preparing to run a marathon. 

Yet the presence of grand-children and the  arrangements which are usual today, not least to assist their parents in earning livings, made for grand-parents to care for them occasionally, tends to extend once more one's day and is hugely beneficial - hopefully for them and their parents as well.

Looking back at those Ladycross years; perhaps the remaining friend of that time and his wife will be able to meet us in Dublin next month.